Some amount of confusion still reigns with regard to the terms 'Arya'
or 'Aryans' that represent the language, the culture, the religion, the
people, and for some, even the 'race' of a certain section of prehistoric
South Asians. A clarification and discussion of the available data is in
order.

The following paper deals with these issues and to a large degree, with
the much debated question of the origin of the Arya: Either they are indigenous
to early South Asia or their existence is due to a (partial) influx of
a language and a culture that was of non-South Asian origins.

As in all the sciences, this debate should simply be a question of evidence
and proof, -- in this case one based on linguistic, textual, archaeological,
anthropological, genetic, etc. data. However, the issue has become increasingly
politicized. By now, it is the focal issue of recent revisionist rewriting
of old Indian history and even underlies much of contemporary Indian politics.

The present paper, however, is not concerned with these political aspects,
but with the methods used and the facts that can be retrieved for an adequate
description of the original Aryans (technically, 'Indo-Aryans') of early
South Asia. Some of the questions asked here and answered below are the
following.

How can the ancient Indo-Aryans ("Aryans") of South Asia be defined
and what are their origins.? How were they described over the past one
or two hundred years and what exactly is the new autochthonous or indigenist
scenario? What are the arguments brought forward so far by the autochthonists?
How do these arguments agree with each other in a complete, indigenous
framework? And, perhaps more importantly, how does the new theory agree
with the evidence supplied by the various sciences and humanities?

In sum, do we have a "new paradigm" or not?

The answer will be found at the end of the paper. It is divided into
three major sections, (and due to its length further subdivided for email
delivery into seven sections):

1. The 'traditional' immigration theory of the past two centuries.
(§1-10)

§19. Lack of agreement of autochthonous data with the rest of the
historical evidence: dating of kings & teachers

ARCHAEOLOGY

§20. Archaeology and texts
§21. RV and the Indus civilization: horses and chariots
§22. Absence of towns in the RV
§23. Absence wheat and rice in the RV
§24. RV class society and the Indus civilization
§25. The SarasvatI and dating of the RV and the brAhmaNas
§26. Harappan fire rituals?
§27. Cultural continuity: pottery and the Indus script

The* ''Aryan question'' is concerned with the immigration
of a population speaking an archaic Indo-European language, Vedic Sanskrit,
who celebrate their gods and chieftains in the poems of the oldest Indian
literature, the Rgveda, and who subsequently spread their language, religion,
ritual and social organization throughout the subcontinent. Who were the
'Aryans'? What was their spiritual and material culture and their outlook
on life? Did they ever enter the Indian subcontinent from the outside?
Or did this people develop indigenously in the Greater Panjab? This, the
'Aryan' question, has kept minds -- and politicians -- busy for the
past 200 years; it has been used and misused in many ways. And, its discussion
has become a cottage industry in India during recent years. In this paper,
it will be attempted to present the pros and contras for the (non-)occurrence
of a movement of an 'Aryan' population and its consequences. First, a summary
of the traditional 'western' theory, then the recent Indian counter-theories;
this is followed by an evaluation of its merits; the paper concludes with
some deliberations on the special kind of 'discourse' that informs and
drives the present autochthonous trend.

§1. Terminology

At the outset, it has to be underlined that the term Arya (whence, Aryan)
is the self-designation of the ancient Iranians and of those Indian groups
speaking Vedic Sanskrit and other Old Indo-Aryan (OIA) languages and dialects.
Both peoples called themselves and their language Arya or arya: The
Persian King Darius (519 BCE ) was the first who wrote in ariya and a Late
Vedic text, kauSItaki AraNyaka 8.9, defines the Vedic area as that where
AryA vAc "Arya speech" (i.e. Vedic Sanskrit) is heard. The ancient Eastern
Iranians, too, called themselves airiia: their assumed mythical 'homeland',[N.1]
airiiana,m vaEjah, is described in the Avesta (vIdEvdAd 1); and the name
of the country, irAn, is derived from this word as well. Speakers of Aryan
(i.e. of the IIr. languages) occupied, e.g. in the first millennium BCE,
the vast area between Rumania and Mongolia, between the Urals and the Vindhya,
and between N. Iraq/Syria and the Eastern fringes of N. India. They comprised
the following, culturally quite diverse groups.
(a) North Iranians: Scythians in the vast steppes of the
Ukraine and eastwards of it (surviving as the modern Ossete in the Caucasus),
the Saka of Xinjiang (Khotanese and Tumshuq, mod. Sariqoli) and western
Central Asia, the Saka tigraxauda (the "pointed cap" Saka) and the Saka
haumavarga (''the soma pressing Saka'');
(b) West Iranians: the ancient Medes (mAda of Rai
and Azerbaijan), the mod. Kurds, Baluchis, and Persians (ancient pArsa
of fArs) as well as the Tajik;
(c) E. Iranians in Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan:
speakers of Avestan, Bactrian, mod. Pashto, the mod. Pamir languages, Sogdian
(mod. Yaghnobi), and Choresmian;
(d) The recently islamized Kafiri/Nuristani group in N.E. Afghanistan
with the still non-Islamic Kalash in the Chitral valley of Pakistan; to
this day they have preserved many old traits, such as the c. 2000 BCE pronunciation
of '10' (du.c.) and the old IIr. deity yama rAjA (imra^o);
(e) The speakers of Indo-Aryan: from Afghanistan eastwards into
the Panjab, and then into the north Indian plains. By the time of
the Buddha, the IA languages had spread all over the northern half of the
subcontinent and had displaced almost completely the previously spoken
languages of the area.
Linguists have used the term Arya from early on in the 19th cent. to
designate the speakers of most Northern Indian as well as of all Iranian
languages and to indicate the reconstructed language underlying both Old
Iranian and Vedic Sanskrit. Nowadays this well-reconstructed language is
usually called Indo-Iranian (IIr.), while its Indic branch is called (Old)
Indo-Aryan (IA). An independent third branch is represented by the Kafiri
or Nuristani of N.E. Afghanistan. All these languages belong to the IIr.
branch of the Eastern (or Satem) group of the Indo-Euroepan (IE) languages
which differs from the phonetically more conservative western IE by a number
of innovations. The IE languages (which, confusingly, sometimes were also
called ''Aryan'') included, in ancient times, the vast group of tongues
from Old Icelandic to Tocharian (in Xinjiang, China), from Old Prussian
(Baltic) to Old Greek and Hittite, and from Old Irish and Latin to Vedic
Sanskrit.
However, the use of the word Arya or Aryan to designate the speakers
of all Indo-European (IE) languages or as the designation of a particular
"race" is an aberration of many writers of the late 19th and early 20th
centuries and should be avoided. At least from Neolithic times onwards,
language had little to do with "race"; language also cuts across ethnic
groups and cultures,[N.2] and had little to do with ancient states
or with nationhood, as the use of Aramaic in the Persian empire, Latin
in Medieval Europe and Persian in much of the Near East and in medieval
India may indicate.
It is clear that in the India of the oldest Vedic text,
the Rgveda (RV), Arya was a cultural term (Kuiper 1955, 1991, R. Thapar
1968, Southworth 1979, 1995) indicating the speakers of Vedic Sanskrit
and the bearers of Vedic culture and Vedic ritual; it simply meant 'noble'
by the time of the Buddha and of the early Sanskrit drama. It is also clear
that the poets (RSi, brahma'n, vipra, kavi) of the Rgveda and their aristocratic
patrons regarded themselves and their followers as arya/Arya. (Thieme 1938).
In the sequel, I will carefully distinguish between the following
usages: first, the Arya/ariya/airiia languages, which I will call by their
technical name, Indo-Iranian (IIr).[N.3] When referring to their
Indian sub-branch, I will use Indo-Aryan (IA, or Old IA). However,
the tribes speaking Vedic Sanskrit and adhering to Vedic culture, I will
call Indo-Aryan or Arya. (In common parlance in India, however, Aryan
is used both to refer to IA language as well as to the people speaking
it and belonging to the sphere of Vedic culture, or even to an Aryan '"race'").

§ 2. Texts

Since most of our evidence on the ancient 'Aryans' comes from
the texts and from the linguistic and cultural data contained in
them, it is necessary to give an outline what kind of texts we have for
the early period.
For India, we have the Vedas, a large collection of texts, orally
composed and orally transmitted well into this millennium. Tradition
has taken care to ensure, with various techniques, that the wording and
even tone accents, long lost from popular speech, have been preserved perfectly,
almost like a tape recording. This includes several special ways of recitation,
the padapATha (word-for-word recitation) and several complicated extensions
and modifications (vikRti).[N.4]
They contain mainly religious texts: hymns addressed to the gods
(RV), other mantras in verse or prose (YV, SV, AV saMhitAs) which are used
in the solemn Vedic (zrauta) ritual and the ''theological'' explanations
(brAhmaNas and kRSNa YV saMhitAs), composed in the expository prose of
the ritual, and the mantras used therein. The upaniSads contain (along
with some late RV and AV hymns) early speculation and philosophy,
and the ritual is summed up in systematic form in the sUtras dealing with
the solemn ritual (zrauta-S.), the domestic ritual (gRhya-S.) and proper
Arya behavior (dharma-sUtras). The traditional division of the Four Vedas
into four zruti levels of saMhitA, brAhmaNa, AraNyaka and upaniSad and
the ensuing smRti level (with the sUtras), is somewhat misleading as far
as the development of the texts are concerned. For, the Vedic texts show
a clear linguistic development, just as any other living language; we can
distinguish at least five clearly separate levels of Vedic (Witzel
1989):
1. Rgvedic (with many hymns of RV 10 as a late addition);
2. 'mantra language' (AV, SV as far as differing from RV, YV mantras,
RV Khila);
3. Prose of the kRSNa Yajurveda saMhitAs (MS, KS/KpS, TS);
4. brAhmaNa language, where the late (and mainly S.-E.) level
includes the AraNyakas and the early upaniSads but also the early
sUtras such as BZS;
5. sUtra language which gradually gives way to Epic/Classical Sanskrit.
This distinction is important as it represents, apart from a relative
chronology based on quotations, the only inner-textual way to establish
a dating of these texts.
The Iranians have a set-up of texts quite similar to that of
the Vedas (though this is little observed). However, only about a
quarter of the original Avesta has been preserved after Iran became an
Islamic country in the 7th c. CE. The 5 long gAthA (with 17
individual gAthAs = yasna 28-53) are the RV-like poems of zarathus'tra
himself; the contemporaneous ritual text embedded among the gAthAs, the
yasna haptanghAiti, is a YV-like collection of mantras used for fire worship.
The rest of the Avestan texts is post-Zoroastrian: some sections
of Y 19.9-14, Y 20-21 are like a brAhmaNa passage; the Yas't pick up themes
of RV style praise of certain gods (mithra, vAiiu, etc.), while the nirangistAn
is of zrautasUtra style, the late vIdEvdAd reads like a gRhya/dharmasUtra,
and the nighaNTu list of the nirukta has its echo in the farhang-I-Oim.
Importantly, the whole Avesta has come down to us (just like the one surviving
version of the RV) in padapATha fashion, with most of the sandhis dissolved.
The list of genres and of the ordering of texts indicates how close both
traditions really are, even after the reforms of zarathus'tra.
However, in spite of being geographically closer to the Mesopotamian
cultures with datable historical information, the Avestan texts are as
elusive to absolute dating as the Vedic ones. Mesopotamia (or early China)
simply do not figure in these texts.

§ 3. Dates

An approximation to an absolute dating of Vedic texts, however,
can be reached by the following considerations:[N.5]
(1.) The Rgveda whose geographical horizon is limited to the
Panjab and its surroundings does not yet know of iron but only of the hard
metal copper/bronze (W. Rau 1974, 1983; ayas = Avest. aiiah 'copper/bronze').
Since iron is only found later on in Vedic texts (it is called, just as
in Drav. *cir-umpu), the ''black metal'' (zyAma, kRSNa ayas) and
as makes its appearance in S. Asia only by c. 1200 or 1000 BCE,[N.6 the
RV must be earlier than that.[N.7] The RV also does not know of large
cities such as that of the Indus civilization but only of ruins (armaka,
Falk 1981) and of small forts (pur, Rau 1976). Therefore, it must be later
than the disintegration of the Indus cities in the Panjab, at c. 1900
BCE A good, possible date ad quem would be that of the Mitanni documents
of N. Iraq/Syria of c. 1400 BCE that mention the Rgvedic gods and some
other Old IA words (however, in a form slightly preceding that of the RV).[N.8]
(2.) The mantra language texts (AV etc.) whose geographical horizon
stretches from Bactria (balhika) to aGga (NW Bengal) mention iron for the
first time and therefore should be contemporaneous or slightly rather later
than 1200/1000 BCE.
(3.) The YV saMhitA prose texts have a narrow horizon focusing
on Haryana, U.P. and the Chambal area; they and (4a.) the early Br.
texts seem to overlap in geographical spread and cultural inventory with
the archaeologically attested Painted Gray Ware culture, an elite pottery
ware of the nobility, and may therefore be dated after c. 1200 BCE (until
c. 800 BCE).
(4b.) The end of the Vedic period is marked by the spread of
the Vedic culture of the confederate kuru-paJcAla state of Haryana/U.P.
(but generally, not of its people) eastwards into Bihar (ZB, late AB, etc.)
and by a sudden widening of the geographical horizon to an area from
GandhAra to Andhra (Witzel 1989). This is, again, matched by the
sudden emergence of the NBP luxury ware (700-300 BCE, Kennedy 1995:
229) and the emergence of the first eastern kingdoms such as Kosala (but
not yet of Magadha, that still is off limits to Brahmins). The early upaniSads
precede the date of the Buddha, now considered to be around 400 BCE (Bechert
1982, 1991 sqq.), of mahAvIra, and of the re-emergence of cities around
450 BCE (Erdosy 1988). In short, the period of the four Vedas seems to
fall roughly between c. 1500 BCE[N.9] and c. 500 BCE. (For other
and quite divergent dates and considerations, see below § 11 sqq).

Old Iranian texts

Dating the Avestan texts is equally difficult. Internal evidence
(Skjaervo 1995) of the older Avestan texts (gAthAs/yasna haptanghAiti)
points to a copper/bronze (aiiah) culture quite similar to that of the
RV. The younger texts might to some extent overlap with the expansion
eastwards of the Median realm (c. 700-550 BCE), while parts of the vIdEvdAd
were probably composed only in the post-Alexandrian, Arsacide kingdom.
An indication of the date of younger Avestan dialects is the name of Bactria,
is Y.Av. bAxdhI, which corresponds to AV balhika; this would indicate a
Y.Av. dialect at the time of the AV, c. 1200/1000 BCE (Witzel 1980). zarathus'tra
who spoke Old Avestan should be dated well before this time. Current estimates
range from the 14th to the 7th c. BCE. An early date is confirmed by linguistic
arguments: The name of ahuramazdA appears, in O.Av. as mazdA ahura
(or ahura mazdA), but in Y.Av. as ahura mazdA, and in Old Persian
(519 BCE) already as one word, a[h]uramazdA, with a new grammatical inflexion.
The long history of the word points to an early date of zarathus'tra and
his gAthAs.[N.10]

§4. Indo-Aryans in the RV

A short characterization of the early Indo-Aryans based on the
text of the RV can be attempted as follows. The Indo-Aryans (Arya)
spoke a variety IIr., Vedic Sanskrit, and produced a large volume of orally
composed and orally transmitted literature.
They form a patri-linear society with an incipient class (varNa)
structure (nobles, priest/poets, the 'people'), organized in exogamic clans
(gotra), tribes and occasional tribal unions (anu-druhyu, yadu-turvaza,
pUru-bharata, the Ten Kings' coalition of RV 7.18, the bharata-sRJjaya,
etc.) The tribes are lead by chieftains (rAjan), and occasional Great
Chieftains, elected from the high nobility, and often from the same family.
The tribes constantly fight with each other and with the with the non-IA
dasyu, mostly about ''free space'' (loka, grazing land), cattle, and water
rights: the Arya are primarily half-nomadic cattle-herders (horses, cows,
sheep, goats), with a little agriculture on the side (of barley, yava).
In sport and in warfare they use horse-drawn chariots (ratha) on even ground
and the vipatha (AV+) for rough off-track travel.
Their religion has a complicated pantheon: some gods of nature
(the wind god vAyu, the male fire deity agni, and the female deities of
water ApaH, father heaven/mother earth dyauH pitA/pRthivI [mAtA], the goddess
of dawn, uSas etc.). These deities, however, are not simple forces
of nature but have a complex character and their own mythology. They are
part of a larger system which includes the moral gods of 'law and
order': the Aditya such as varuNa, mitra, aryaman, bhaga, and sometimes
even indra, the prototypical IA warrior; they keep the cosmic and human
realms functioning and in order. All deities, however, are subservient
to the abstract, but active positive 'force of truth' (Rta, similar
to though not identical with the later Hindu concept of dharma), which
pervades the universe and all actions of the gods and humans. The gods
are depicted as engaging in constant and yearly contest with their --originally
also divine-- adversaries, the asura, a contest which the gods always win,
until next time.[N.11] zarathus'tra used this particular old IIr. concept
to establish his dualistic religion of a fight between the forces of
good and evil.
All gods, in the Veda especially indra and agni, are worshipped
in elaborate rituals (e.g. the complicated New Year soma sacrifice). The
rituals follow the course of the year and are celebrated with
the help of many priests; they are of a more public nature than the simple
domestic (gRhya) rituals or rites of passage. In these rituals, the gods
are invited, in pUjA-like fashion, to the offering ground, are seated on
grass next to the sacred fires, fed with meat or grain cakes and with the
sacred drink of soma (and also, the alcoholic surA), are entertained by
well-trained, bard-like poets (brahma'n, RSi, vipra). These compose hymns
(sUkta), after long concentration (dhI) but often also on the spot, meant
to invite the gods and to praise the nobility (dAnastuti), that is the
patrons of the ritual. In the few philosophical hymns of the RV the
poets speculate about the origin of the universe, the gods, and the humans,
the forces that keep the world moving (Rta, yajJa, zraddhA, or poetic speech,
vAc).
The rites of passage are less visible in the RV (except for marriage
and death); it is clear, however, that a period of training in traditional
knowledge (veda 'knowledge'), interspersed with periods of roaming the
countryside in search of a start capital of cattle (gaviSTi) as vrAta/vrAtya
(Falk 1986), is followed by the full admission to adult society and marriage.
However, there is no varNAzrama system yet.

§5. Irano-Aryans in the Avesta

Like the Rgvedic society, with its three Arya classes (RV 10.90),
the Avestan texts, especially the later Y.Av., know of three classes, the
priests, noblemen, and the ''farmers'', for by then agriculture has become
more important. However, just like the RV, the Y.Av. also knows of an artisan
class (corresponding to the Rgvedic zUdra). The O.Av. texts, however, still
indicate a half-nomadic cattle-based tribal culture with small tribal units
(airiiaman) occupying a larger territory (dax'iiu). The younger texts,
have a clear view of all of Eastern Iran: Choresmia, Sogdia, Bactria, Margiana,
Arachosia, the Helmand valley, Xn@nta (Gorgan), Rag'a (Rai), Varna (Bannu,
NWFP), ''The Seven Rivers'' (Greater Panjab, see Witzel 2000). Even in
the fairly late list of V. 1, the west (Persis and maybe even Media) are
conspicuously absent. Many of these tribal areas/incipient states
reappear as Persian provinces (dahayu), but pArsa is not called so
as it not a ''foreign (dasyu) territory''.
Some definite historical information exists about the W. Iranians
(Persians, Medes) as they were close neighbors of the Mesopotamian civilizations.
They are first mentioned in Assyrian inscriptions at 835 BCE as the 27
pars'uwas' tribes and the Medes (c. 744/727 BCE). Thus, the W. Iranian
appear early in the first millennium, while the E. Iranians can be dated
only with reference to the Veda and to the early Iranian empires.
The Zoroastrian reform of the Old IIr. religion had erroneously
been regarded, around the turn of the 19th/20th c., as caused by
a split between the two peoples. This is still echoed nowadays in some
writings but the situation is much more complex. Early IIr. religion focused
on the contrast between the deva and the asura: IIr *daiua,
Av. daEuua, OP. daiva :: IIr. *asura, Av. ahura, OP. a[h]ura-(mazda). In
the RV both groups are regarded as are 'gods' --probably due to their equal
status in the New Year contests -- and only in the post-Rgvedic texts,
the asura have definitely become demon-like. Of the major asura (or, Aditya)
varuNa, sometimes called asura and medhira/medhA in the RV[N.12]
appears in the Avesta as ahura mazdA (cf. ahura and mithra, Y. 17.10),
mitra as mithra, aryaman as airiiaman, bhaga as bag'a, vivasvant
(mArtANda) as vIvanghuuant, and mArtANda's brother indra as the demon indara.
While zarathus'tra kept ahura mazdA as (sole and supreme) deity,
the ahura, all other IIr. deva (Av. daEuua) are relegated to the
ranks of demons, e.g. indara, gandar@wa (gandharva), na^onghaithiia (nAsatya
= azvin). A few devas and asuras were retained, apparently after
zarathus'tra, as divine helpers of the Lord: mithra, airiiaman, Atar (standing
in for agni), haoma (soma) etc. The old state of contest between
the deva and asura was amalgamated with the another old opposition, that
of between Rta (Av. aS~a) and druh (Av. druj), Active Truth and Deceit.
The Ahura(s) are the champions of Truth, the daEuuas those of Deceit. The
righteous must choose between aS~a and druj, between ahuramazdA and the
daEuuas, and will be rewarded in ahura mazdA's heaven. -- Many of
the old IIr. rituals are, however, continued in Zoroastrianism as well:
there is a daily fire ritual (text in yasna haptanghAiti), a soma (haoma)
ritual, even animal sacrifice.

§6. The Indo-Iranians

The preceding sketch indicates the very close relationship between
the two peoples calling themselves Arya. Not only are their languages so
closely related that their oldest attested forms might often be taken as
dialects of the same language, but their society, their rituals, their
religion and their traditional poetry resemble each other so closely that
it has always been regarded as certain that the Vedic Indo-Aryans, the
Iranians and the Kafiri (Nuristani) are but offshoots of one group speaking
IIr., a few hundred years before the RV and the Old Avestan texts.
The IIr. language, as a branch of Eastern IE, shares many
peculiarities with other E. IE. languages such as Balto-Slavic: in sounds
(*k' > s'/z : Latin equus 'horse', O.Irish ech, Toch. yuk, yakwe
:: Lithuanian as'va` (fem.), IIr *ac'ua > E.Ir. aspa, Vedic azva),
but also in vocabulary (Sanskrit dina 'day', O. Slav. dini :: Lat. dies,
cf. Schrader 1890: 312), and perhaps even in mythology: Ved. bhaga
''God 'Share' '', Iran. (Med.) baga 'god', Sogd. bag'a 'Lord, Sir', O.
Slav. bogu 'god' (though probably from N. Iranian *baga), Skt. parjanya,
Lith. perku'nas, O. Slav. perunu (Schrader 1890: 414). Iranian and Vedic
are so close that frequently whole sentences can be reconstructed:
IIr. *tam *mitram *yaj'Amadhai > Ved. tam mitraM yajAmahe, Avest. t@m mithr@m
yazamaide. (For more on Central and North Asian connections, see below
§ 12.1, 12.2., 12.6).
An IIr. parent language and large parts of the IIr. spiritual
and material culture can be reconstructed by carefully using the method
of linguistic palaeontology.[N.13] A very brief summary of IIr. would
then include: These tribes spoke the IIr. language, had a common
archaic poetry (e.g. triSTubh-like poems), with many common expressions
such as 'nondecaying fame'. They had the same type of priests and rituals
(Ved. hotR : Avest. zaotar, soma : haoma), the same set of gods and
a similar mythology: yama (yima) and manu descend from vivasvant
(vIvanghuuant). Some of these deities are IIr. innovations (the asura /
Aditya), others go back to IE times (agni, Latin ignis; hutam, Greek khuto'n
'sacrificial libation' :: Engl. god).
IIr. society had a patriarchal, exogamic system of
three classes, with tribal chieftains, and a priest/poet class. They
were semi-nomadic cattle (pazu : fs'u) herders, constantly in search
for water and open pastures (uru gavyUti : vouru.gaoiiaoiti), and with
just a little agriculture (yava : yauuan). At the New Year rituals they
engaged in chariot races (ratha/ratha 'chariot', ratheSTha : rathaes'tA-
'charioteer'), and other sports (muSTihan), and speech contests (Kuiper
1960).
Their society was governed by set of strict moral principles,
including adherence to truth (satya : haithiia), oaths (touching or drinking
water, kozam pA) and other oral agreements between individuals (arya-man
: airiia-man, especially for marriage and guest friendship) and between
tribes (mitra : mithra) which regulated water rights and pasture.
In sum, all the linguistic and textual data mentioned so far
link the Indo-Aryans of the Rgvedic Panjab with languages spoken in areas
to the northwest of the Indian subcontinent, even if local South Asian
elements already figure prominently in the RV.

§7. An "Aryan" Race?

This close resemblance in language, customs and beliefs does not,
of course, imply or involve, nor does it solve the question of who
exactly the people(s) were that called themselves arya/Arya, whom they
included, or even how they looked. The question of physical appearance
or 'race'[N.14] is of the least importance in describing the early Arya,
but since race has always been injected into the discussion,[N.15] a few
words are in order.
The combination of a specific language with any 'racial' type
is not maintained by linguists. At this late, post-Meso-/Neolithic stage
in human development, language no longer has any very close relation
to 'race'. Even the early Indo-Europeans were a quite mixed lot, as has
been stressed for decades.[N.16] Recently developed methods of genetic
testing (mtDNA, non-recombinant Y chromosome) have and will shed further
light on this (Cavalli-Sforza 1994, 1955, Kivisild 1999, Semino 2000, Underhill
2000, Bamshad 2001, etc.). It must be pointed out that genetic evidence,
though still in its infancy, is often superior to (even multi-variate)
palaeontological evidence as it more specific than distinguishing types
reflected in osteology, based on the simple phenotype adaptation to living
conditions. Genetic evidence frequently allows to pinpoint (sub-)branches
in the cladistic tree at a particular point in time and space.
In the present context, however, it is not important to find
out what the outward appearance (''race'') of the those speaking Indo-Aryan
languages was, but how they lived, worshipped, thought, and especially
what kind of poetical texts they composed. The rest is interpretation,
but it is already the interpretation of the Rgvedic puruSa hymn (RV 10.90)
with its four classes, varNa (''colors''), which seem to be related
to the traditional colors of the three IE classes, white-red-blue/green.
(Puhvel 1987, cf. now also Hock 1999: 155). The term is attested
since RV 2.12.4, etc. The RV often makes a distinction between light :
darkness, good : evil, between Arya : dasyu. In many cases this is just
a cultural distinction, defining the boundaries between 'Us' and the 'Others'
(Witzel 1995).[N.17] However, many scholars of the past two centuries automatically
assumed that the immigrating Indo-Aryans (coming from somewhere to the
North of India/Iran) were light-skinned people. All such terms are relative,
yet, the Kashmirian author kSemendra (11th c.) speaks of a Bengali student
in Kashmir as a 'black skeleton, monkeying about' and the cult of lighter
skin still is undeniable, as a look at Indian marriage advertisements will
indicate.
Such 'racial' characterizations tell us little about the look
of contemporary people, and as indicated above, this is not important for
our investigations.[N.18] The speakers of (pre-)Old Indo-Aryan (pre-Vedic)
might have been quite a diverse group from the very beginning, and even
if many of the original immigrant bands might rather have looked more like
Kashmiris or Afghanis and not at all like their various European linguistic
relatives or the 'typical' North Indian[N.19] of today. Again, outward
appearance, whatever it might have been, is of no consequence for our studies.
So far archaeology and palaeontlogy, based on multi-variate analysis
of skeletal features, have not found a new wave of immigration into the
subcontinent after 4500 BCE (a separation between the Neolithic and Chalcolithic
populations of Mehrgarh), and up to 800 BCE: ''Aryan bones'' have not been
discovered (Kennedy 1995: 49-54, 2000), not even of the Gandhara Grave
culture which is usually believed to have been IA.[N.20] There are of course
minor differences between the various areas of the northwestern subcontinent
(such as Sarai Khola : Harappa, or even Harappa: Mohenjo Daro). Anyhow,
the genetic and therefore, skeletal contribution of the various IA bands
and tribes may have been relatively negligible (cf. n. 21,23). However,
a single excavation can change the picture. Even the large invading force
of the Huns was not attested in European archaeology until some graves
were found in Hungary some two decades ago.[N.21] The cemeteries (if any
at all in Rgvedic times) of the small, semi-sedentary pastoral IA groups
were composed, according to the texts, of 3-6 yard high grave mounds; they
are not likely to be found easily in the alluvium of the constantly shifting
rivers of the Panjab.[N.22]
Once genetic testing will have provided us with more samples
of the (few not cremated) skeletal remains from contemporary burials and
of modern populations we may be in a better position to judge the phsyical
character of previous and modern populations. This will become apparent
even more, once not just mtDNA (inherited by females) but also the male
Y chromosome (some of it likely that of immigrating tribesmen) will have
been studied.[N.23] Only then we will be able to tell which particular
strains, corresponding to which neighboring areas,[N.24] were present in
the Northwest of the subcontinent at that time.[N.25]
In the end, to be absolutely clear, what counts is the Indo-Aryan
culture, their social system, their texts, their rituals, and the frame
of mind they brought into the subcontinent. These items are treated at
some length below; in addition, we have to take into account the facts
from archaeology, human palaeontology, genetics, history of technology,
and incidental features from astronomy to zoology.[N.26]

§8. Immigration

Immigration, however, has often been denied in India especially
during the past two decades, and more recently also by some western archaeologists.
How likely is an immigration scenario on the basis of comparable cases
from Indian and non-Indian history? Leaving aside the prehistoric migrations
starting with the move of Homo Sapiens 'Out of Africa' some 50,000 years
ago, we actually do know that one group after the other has entered the
Indian subcontinent, as immigrants or as invaders, in historical times.
They include tribal groups such as the Saka, the Yue Ji (Tukhara),
Kushana, abhIra, gurjara as well as large armies, such as those of Darius'
Persians, of Alexander's and the Bactrian Greeks in the first mill. BCE,
of both the Chinese via Tibet, Ladakh and Nepal, and the Arabs into Sindh
in the 7-8th c. CE; further the Ahom Tai in Assam, and the Huns, Turks,
Moghuls, Iranians, and Afghans via the northwestern passes in the first
and second mill. CE. In addition, small-scale semi-annual transhumance
movements between the Indus plains and the Afghan and Baluchi highlands
continue to this day (Witzel 1995: 322, 2000). Why, then, should all immigration,
or even mere transhumance trickling in, be excluded in the single case
of the Indo-Aryans, especially when the linguistic evidence, below §10
sqq., so clearly speaks for it? Just one "Afghan" Indo-Aryan tribe
that did not return to the highlands but stayed in their Panjab winter
quarters in spring was needed to set off a wave of acculturation in the
plains, by transmitting its 'status kit' (Ehret) to its neighbors.[N.27]
The vehement denial of any such possibility (see below §11 sqq) is
simply unreasonable, given the frequency of movements, large and small,
into South Asia via the northwestern corridors.
The important, clinching factor (§ 10) to decide the question
is the following: the Indo-Aryans, as described in the RV, represent something
definitely new in the subcontinent. Both their spiritual and much of their
material culture are new; these and their language link them to the areas
west and northwest of the subcontinent, and to some extent beyond, to the
Ural area and to S. Russia/Ukraine. The obvious conclusion should be that
these new elements somehow came from the outside.
It is indeed historically attested that the Pars'umas' (Persians)
moved from northwestern to southwestern Iran, but this is limited to a
relatively small area only. More important are the 'Mitanni' Indo-Aryans
in N. Iraq and Syria (c. 1460-1330 BCE), who clearly show IA, not Iranian
influences (aika 'one' instead of Iranian aiva), and the Kassites who,
as a first wave, preceded them in Mesopotamia. They dislodged the local
Akkadian kings for several centuries, c. 1677-1152 BCE, and they have preserved
names such as z'uriias' (Ved. sUrya) or abirat(t)as' (abhiratha).[N.28]
All these groups that are in various ways culturally related to the IIr.s
are intrusive in their respective areas of settlement. The same may be
assumed as far as the Greater Panjab is concerned.
For, the massive cultural changes in the subcontinent could not
have spontaneously developed locally in the Panjab, even assuming an amalgamation
(why, by whom, how?) of various components that had been there before.
Instead, it easier to assume that a new element actually brought in new
items such as the domesticated horse and the horse-drawn chariot (§21),
and IE/IA style poetry, religion and ritual. Also, it is not very likely
and, indeed, not visible that leaders of the Indus civilization or rather
their 'Panjabi' village level successors planned and executed such a universal
shift of the cultural paradigm themselves. A massive, if gradual introduction
of (some, if not all) IA traits seems the only viable conclusion (see below,
on Ehret's model).
The denial of immigration into the area of an already existing
culture has recently been proposed by some archaeologists as well; they
posit a purely local, indigenous development of cultures, e.g. by the British
archaeologist Lord Renfrew (1987)[N.29] and by some Americans such as Shaffer
(1984, 1999) who think that new languages were introduced by way
of trade and by taking over of new models of society.
If there was immigration, who then were the indigenous inhabitants
of the subcontinent? They can in fact still be traced in the substrates
of the RV and of modern languages: an unknown Indo-Gangetic language has
supplied the c. 40% of the agricultural terminology in Hindi (typical already
for the RV, Kuiper 1955, 1991). A clear hint is provided by Nahali,
a small IA language spoken on the Tapti River, NW of Ellichpur in Madhya
Pradesh. At successively "lower" levels of Nahali vocabulary, 36%
are of Kurku (Munda) and 9% of Dravidian origin, while the oldest level,
some 24%, do not have any cognates (Kuiper 1962: 50, 1966: 96-192, but
see now Mother Tongue II-III, 1996-7) and belong to the oldest language
traceable in India (Witzel 1999a,b). Clearly, Munda, Dravidian and IA are
consecutive(?) overlays on pre-existing languages. Again, such a scenario
is met with in many other areas of the world.

§9. Remembrance of immigration

It has frequently been denied [N.30] that the RV contains any
memory or information about the former homeland(s) of the Indo-Aryans.
It is, indeed, typical for immigrant peoples to forget about their original
homeland after a number of generations (e.g., the European Gypsies claim
to have come, not from India, but from Egypt and Biblical Ur in S. Iraq),
and to retain only the vaguest notion about a foreign origin. Or, they
construct prestigious lines of descent (Virgil in his Aeneid makes the
Romans descendants of the heroes of Troy).[N.31] However, in the RV there
are quite a few vague reminiscences of former habitats, that is, of the
Bactria-Margiana area, situated to the north of Iran and Afghanistan, and
even from further afield.
Such a connection can be detected in the retention by the Iranians
of IIr./IA river names (Witzel 1987, 1999, Hintze 1998) and in the many
references in the RV to mountains and mountain passes.[N.32] The mythical
IIr. river *rasA corresponds in name to the Vedic rasA (RV, JB), the E.Ir.
(Avest.) ranghA, and the N.Ir. *rahA that is preserved in Greek as rhA
and designates the R. Volga.[N.33] Further, there are the (Grk.) sindoi
people on the R. Kuban, north of the Caucasus, and there is the (Grk.)
sindEs, the R. Murghab/Tedzhen on the borders of Iran, Afghanistan and
Turkmenistan (Tacitus, Annales X.10). It divides the (Lat.) dahae (Ved.
dasa/dAsa) from the (Lat.) arii (Humbach 1991), -- a statement that almost
looks as if it was taken from the RV. Both sindoi and sindEs preserve,
with their s-, a pre-Iranian form of the name (details in Witzel
1999)[N.34] that reminds of Vedic sindhu and Iran. hindu, the border river
of Iran and India and of the habitable world in general (Witzel 1984).
Another N. Iranian tribe, the (Lat.) dahae, (Grk.) daai,
occurs in Vedic as dAsa or dasa. Related forms are Skt. dAsa "slave", the
Avest. tribe of the da^ongha (next to the airiia), (N.)Iran. (a demon,
az'i) dAha-ka, cf. Ved. dAsa ahIzu (Witzel 1995, Hock 1999), and the Uralic
loan word (Vogul. Mansi) tas 'stranger', as well as IE > PGrk. *doselo-
> Mycenean Grk. doero, Grk. doulos "slave"; note further: Ved. das-yu 'enemy,
foreigner', OIr. *dah-yu, O.P. dahayu 'province', Avest. daingvhu-
"foreign country, enemy".[N.35] Apparently, foreign or conquered territory
was regarded as that of the enemy and caught enemies became slaves. Conversely,
one of the many loan words from IA in Finno-Ugrian is the Finnish word
for slaves, captured in raids into Southern territory, orja, "Aryans",[N.36]
confirming that the North Iranians, just like the Scythian alan (the mod.
Ossetes) called themselves 'Arya' as well.
Another N. Iranian tribe were the (Grk.) parnoi, Ir. *parna.
They have for long been connected with another traditional enemy of the
Aryans, the paNi (RV+). Their vara-like forts with their sturdy cow stables
have been compared with the impressive forts of the Bactria-Margiana (BMAC)
and the eastern Ural Sintashta cultures (Parpola 1988, Witzel 2000), while
similar ones are still found today in the Hindukush. The RV regards the
cattle-rich paNi, with their walled forts (pur, Rau 1976, Elizarenkova
1995), as the traditional, albeit intentionally semi-mythical enemies.
A Rgvedic myth locates the primordial cows in a cave (vala, cf. Avest.
vara) on an island (JB) in the rasA, where they were guarded by the demoniac
paNis. Against the background sketched above, this myth looks like a semi-historical
'update' (but still, a myth) involving the great/mythical border river,
past foes of the BMAC area, and contemporaneous, very real enemies of the
Greater Panjab.
Further traces of an Iranian connection can be seen in the hydronomical
evidence discussed above and in the many references in the RV to mountains
and mountain passes.[N.37] Also, the retention and adaptation by the Iranians
of earlier pre-Rgvedic river names points to an earlier IA settlement in
Afghanistan (sarasvatI = haraxvaitI / Arachosia, sarayu = harOiiu-/harE
= Herat R., gomatI = Gomal R., sindhu = hindu/h@Ndu, etc.,
Witzel 1999, cf. Hintze 1998). One of the semi-demonic enemies in the (Afghani)
mountains is zambara, son of kulitara, with his many fortresses (pur, cf.
above on Hindukush forts).
Such names (studied at least since Brunnhofer 1910, Hillebrandt
1913; now Parpola 1988, Witzel 1999) retain pre-Old Iranian forms and they
clearly lead back into Central Asia and Greater Iran. They also retain
some vague reminiscences of former enemies (*parna, dAsa, zambara) and
of place names (rasA, sindEs, sarasvatI,[N.38] sarayu, gomatI, sindhu),
all aligned along the expected route of immigration into the subcontinent,[N.39]
from the northern steppes (such as those of the Volga/Urals) via Margiana/Bactria
to Herat/Arachosia and E. Afghanistan (Gomal R.)[N.40] Then, there are
the many instances in the RV which speak about actual transhumance
movement of tribes through mountain passes and into the land of the 'seven
rivers' (Witzel 1995) that were more open to extensive pastoralism after
the decline of the Indus civilization.[N.41] Individuals such as the great
RSi vasiSTha and his clan (RV 7.33.1-3), and whole tribes such as the bharata
and ikSvAku (JB 3.237-8 : Caland §204), are described as crossing
the sindhu. (Incidentally, nowhere in the Vedas do we hear of a westward
movement, as some 'Out of India' proponents would have it nowadays).[N.42]
The early YV saMhitAs (KS 26.2, MS 4.7.9), however, continue
to report such movements into the subcontinent. They state that the Kurus
move eastwards or southwards victoriously, and TB 1.8.4.1 adds information
about raiding expeditions of the kuru-paJcAlas into the east (no longer
practiced by the time of ZB 5.5.2.3-5). The YV saMhitAs clearly belong
to the post-copper/bronze age period, as they know of the use of iron.
In other words, we hear about eastward/southward raids and movements of
Vedic tribes towards Bihar and the Vindhya at about/after c. 1000 BCE;
the same middle Vedic texts actually speak of the necessity to constantly
watch one's back (Rau 1957).
Finally, in the same vein, there also is a so far neglected passage
from a late Vedic text in brAhmaNa style, BZS 18.44: 397.9 sqq. It plays
on the etymologies of ay/i 'to go' and amA vas 'to stay at home', and actually
seems to speak, once we apply brAhmaNa style logic and (etymological) argumentation
style,[N.43] of a migration from the Afghani borderland of gandhAra and
parzu (mod. Pashto) to Haryana/Uttar Pradesh and Bihar: prAG AyuH pravavrAja.
tasyaite kuru-paJcAlAH kAzi-videhA ity. etad Ayavam. pratyaG amAvasus.
tasyaite gAndhArayas +parzavo[N.44] 'rATTA ity. etad AmAvasyavam. "Ayu
went (ay/i) eastwards. His (people) are the (well-known) kuru-paJcAla and
the kAzi-videha. That is the Ayava (group). amAvasu (stayed at home,[N.45]
amA vas) in the West. His (people) are the (well-known) gAndhAri, parzu
and arATTa. That is the AmAvasyava (group)."[N.46]
The last account is quite different in tone and content from
the well known tale of videgha mAthava (ZB 1.4.10-18), which is not a 'history
of the settlement of Bihar' but a myth about the importation of kuru orthopraxy
and Brahmanism[N.47] into N. Bihar. (Witzel 1989, 1995, 1997). Such tales
of authorization, empowerment and justification of rule, spiritual authority
and social set-up (the videgha or the zunaHzepa legends)[N.48] have to
be carefully separated from the rather unintentional mentioning of little
understood, dim memories of earlier homelands, notions which are fading
already in the RV itself. However, these tales are perpetuated for several
hundred years as far as movements further into the subcontinent are concerned.
All these data cannot be just accidental or due to the imagination
of Rgvedic and brAhmaNa authors who looked for a prestigious origin of
their lineage, tribe or culture: why should they look outwards to the 'barbaric'
countries of Central Asia/Iran/Afghanistan?[N.49] The center of the world
was, even according to the later parts of the RV (3.53), on the sarasvatI
in Haryana. This attitude continued to be the norm in the brAhmaNa period,
and it is vaguely remembered in the pAli canon; it clearly referred to
even in the manu-smRti (ch. 2). The northwest, denigrated by the AV (5.22,
PS 12.1-2), and depicted in nirukta 2.2, cf. 3.18 and in pataJjali's mahAbhASya
(ed. Kielhorn, I p. 9) as occupied by Avestan speakers of the Kamboja land
in S.E. Afghanistan (Witzel 1980: 92), is regarded as non-Arya.
Rather, the data mentioned above seem to reflect very dim memories
of people and places much further west than the Panjab. Or, if one still
wants to be even more cautious, one may say that the texts preserve some
no little or longer understood words and phrases that point to Central
Asia. In other words, there is no reason to dismiss this kind of evidence
that involves a number of bands and tribes who spoke a language closely
allied with Iranian, Slavic, etc., who followed customs, beliefs and rituals,
and used a poetic tradition all of which go back to Indo-European sources.
Just because a theory involving an initial IA immigration, or even a gradual
trickling in of some bands and tribes is disliked now, regarded as historically
tainted or as 'politically incorrect', this does not discredit the actual
data.[N.50]
The Iranian textual materials on immigration are even more meager
but they provide similar indirect reminiscences (rahA, dahayu/daingvhu,
h@Ndu/handu, parna, daha, etc.). These texts make, like the RV, a clear
difference between the Arya and their enemies, e.g. anairiiO dang'hAuuO
'the non-Arya lands' (Yt 18.2 etc.) some of whose people, doubtless war
captives, are described as concubines in the houses of the mazdA worshippers
(Geiger 1882: 176). The opposition between airiia :: tUra :: sairima ::
sAina :: da^ongha[N.51] (Yt. 13.143-5) is remarkable, though all these
tribes are already described as having Zoroastrians among them.
airiiana,m vaEjah, the first country in the list of Iranian countries
(V.1) has usually been understood as the 'original' (northern, e.g. Choresmian)
home of all airiia (a term indicating only the Eastern Iranians, Witzel
2000) However, this "best of all places and settlements" has ten winter
months and only two cool summer months; such a description does not correspond
to the hot summers of Choresmia etc., but refers to the climate of the
mountain pastures with their numerous 'Aryan springs', that is central
Afghanistan. This is an area right in the center of all the 'Iranian' lands
of the Avesta, a region typical for transhumance pastoralism, which is
nowadays inhabited, in part, by the Moghol descendants of the Mongol invasion
of the 13th century. This so-called "homeland of the Aryans" thus occupies,
for the Avesta, a central position: for the contemporary East Iranians
it is the central xvaniratha region ('the one having particular pleasures
of its own'), similar to that of madhyadeza, "the Middle Country" of Manu.
airiiana,m vaEjah is certainly not located inside India (Misra 1992: 39,
Elst 1999: 197 sq., Talageri 2000), nor does it have any bearing on the
original home of all Iranians,[N.52] or even of the speakers of Indo-Iranian
(Witzel 2000).

§10. Acculturation: linguistic and cultural

While there are some such vague reminiscences of an immigration
and of older homelands, it must be underlined that even the earliest RV
hymns clearly reflect South Asian realities, in other words, they were
already composed in the Greater Panjab. However, they also include many
non-Sanskritic words and names. There are those of non-Aryan ''foreigners''
(kIkaTa, pramaganda, etc.,) and demons (zambara, cumuri, etc.) but also
those of noblemen and chiefs (balbUtha, bRbu) and occasionally of poets
(kavaSa, kaNva, agastya, kazyapa). All these non-IA words do not have a
Vedic or IE background (see below), something that can be determined by
purely linguistic means; such words are neither possible in Vedic nor in
IIr or Indo-European in general (Mayrhofer 1986:95, Szemere'nyi 1970
: 90sqq.); this is a point almost universally neglected by the advocates
of the autochthonous theory (§ 11 sqq).
The appearance of such names among the groups belonging to the
Indo-Aryans indicates, that arya/Arya does not mean a particular ''people''
or even a particular 'racial' group but all those who had joined the tribes
speaking Vedic Sanskrit and adhering to their cultural norms (such as ritual,
poetry, etc.) -- as has been underlined for decades (Kuiper 1955,
1991, Southworth 1979, 1995, Thapar 1968, Witzel 1995). The Others
such as the kIkaTa (RV 3.53), who inhabit the greater Panjab together with
the Arya, are even declared ''not to be fit to deal with cows.'' They form
the amorphous group of the dasyu ''the foreigner, the enemy.'' While the
Arya frequently fight among themselves, their main enemy are the dasyu
who are portrayed in typical half-mythical fashion as ''foreign devils''
and demons.
In short, the Rgvedic evidence does not supports a clear-cut
division between the various tribes/populations of those originally
external, non-South Asian (i.e. Indo-Aryan) and of autochthonous
nature, but it distinguishes between Arya and dasyu; it also does not allow
for a happy co-existence (Kalyanaraman 1999) between speakers of Vedic
IA (the 'cultural' Arya) and those who oppose them (kIkaTa, and the other
dasyu). While it was a matter of (tribal) choice to which cultural group
one belonged and which model of society and religion one followed, this
choice had serious consequences for one's status and, ultimately, for the
cultural survival of one's group.
This picture, clearly visible in the middle and later strata
of the Rgveda (books 3, 7, 2, 8; 1, 10), is supported by the evidence from
the older books (4-6). There must have been a long period of acculturation
between the local population and the ''original'' immigrants speaking Indo-Aryan.
Indeed, the bulk of the RV represents only some 5 generations of chieftains
(and some 5 generations of poets, Witzel 1987, 1995; Talageri's claims
(2000) of some two thousand years of RV composition are fantastic, see
Witzel 2001). These sets of five generations are rather late within the
framework of the RV; the famous chieftain of the bharata, sudAs, is one
of the latest mentioned. On the other hand, a number of tribal federations
(anu-druhyu, yadu-turvaza, etc.) preceded that of the pUru and the bharata
who were dominant in the middle RV period (Witzel 1995, 1997). It is during
the long period of initial acculturation that some of the linguistic (and
cultural) features (Kuiper 1991, 1955) of the early (pre-)Rgvedic period
must have evolved. They include new grammatical formations such as the
absolutives in -tvA, tvI (based on the archaic suffix -tu, as in gatvA)[N.53]
and its correspondent form in -ya for verbs with preverbs (saM-gamya) (Kuiper
1967, Tikkanen 1987). This split in absolutive formation corresponds, e.g.,
to Dravidian verbal structure, but absolutives are not found in Iranian.
Significantly, vasiSTha the self-proclaimed immigrant author of much of
book 7, avoids them. The speakers of Indo-Aryan and the local population
must therefore have interacted on a bilingual basis for a long period,
before the composition of the present RV hymns with their highly hieratic,
poetical speech (Kuiper 1991, and 2000).[N.54] An absolute date for this
extended period can be inferred from the linguistic peculiarities of Mitanni-IA
(c. 1400 BCE) that slightly predate those of the extant RV. Constant contact
and bilingualism between speakers of OIA and of the local language(s) of
the Greater Panjab produced such calques as the absolutives, or the use
of iti, and perhaps even the rapid change to some Prakrit-like forms (jyotiS,
muhur, etc., which have been disputed as such, see Kuiper 1991:2, 27 sqq.,
79; 2000, aan de Wiel 2000).
Local influence is indeed what the non-IE part of RV vocabulary
suggests, by Kuiper's count some 380 words or about 3.8% of the vocabulary
of the RV (Kuiper 1991, 1995: 261). Such local substrate words can easily
be identified because of their isolation within the IE-derived IA vocabulary,
i.e. they always do not have Iranian, Slavic, etc. counterparts. Frequently,
their sounds and syllable structure are non-IE as well. This is a point
so far completely neglected or simply derided,[N.55] even when the evidence
stares into their faces, by the advocates of the autochthonous theory (with
the --only very partial-- exception of Elst 1999, Talageri 1993, 2000).[N.56]
Since the very concept of a substrate is often misunderstood
(see the discussion by Bryant 1999), a brief characterization is in order
(Witzel, forthc. b). Most words in early Vedic that do not conform to IE/IIr
word structure (including sounds, root structure and word formation) and
have no clear IE/IIr etymology must belong to a preceding language, a non-IA
substrate; some of them, however, are loans from a neighboring non-IA language
(adstrate, the favored position by those indigenists who recognize that
they actually have a problem, see e.g. Lal 1997). It is, however,
important to underline that it is the factor of phonetic and grammatical
structure that does not fit in these cases the IE/IIr/IA one of Vedic Sanskrit.
Not just etymology (which may remain unsolvable in many cases[N.57] and
is, in others, not even necessary),[N.58] but all the structural features
are of equal importance here. [N.59]
A word that superficially looks IE/IA, such as kosala, is simply
disqualified linguistically by its -s- (pace the out of hand dismissal
by Talageri 2000: 248, 299); or, words such as kInAza, kIkaTa, pramaganda,
balbUtha, bRsaya can by no means be explained in terms of IE: (1) there
are no IE/IA roots such as kIn, kIk,[N.60] mag, balb, bRs as only
roots of the format {(s)(C) (R) e (R) (C/s)} are allowed[N.61] and (2)
the sound b is very rare in IE; (3) suffixes such as -A-z,
-T, -an-d/-a-nd-, -bUth-/-bU-th- are not found in IE/IA; (4) only S (but
not s) is allowed in Vedic after i,u,r,k. In addition, these words
do not have any cogent IE/IA etymologies.[N.62]
The use of such formal, structural categories immediately allows
to detect many words as being non-IE, and as originally non-IA. Just as
for IE and IA, similar structural rules exist Drav. and for Munda. The
basic Dravidian word structure (in the sequel @ = long or short vowel)
is (C)@(C), and suffixes have the structure: -C, -C@, -CC@,
-CCC@; after a root -C the vowels -a-, -i-, or -u are inserted, thus
@C-a-C etc., C@C-a-C etc..; and with base final -C-u,
C@C-a-C-u (Krishnamurti, forthc. 2001). While the present Munda word structure
includes (Pinnow 1959: 449 sqq.) C@C@, C@@C, C@C@, @CC@, @VV@C, C@CC@,
C@CC@C, the oldest word structure was: (C)@(C), C@-C@C, C@C-C@*C, C@C-@C,
C@C-C@*C-@C. Clearly, both Drav. and Munda words are frequently enough
quite different from IE ones with: (prefix) + (C)(R)e(R)(C) + (suffix +
ending). While Drav. and Munda share C@C, C@C@C, Munda words can
often be distinguished, as C@- in C@-C@c is a prefix, something that does
not exist in Drav.; and while C@C@c may exist in IE/IA (even with a prefix
C@-), normally, C@C- will be the IA root and -@C a suffix.
A comparison of these data frequently allows to narrow down the
origin of a word,[N.63] though this has not generally been done in practice
(Witzel, forthc. b). IA etymologies are now discussed at a high level of
sophistication, with a complete explanation of all of their constituent
parts, of related roots and of suffixes employed. However, the Dravidian
dictionaries DED/DEDR still consist only of lists of related words
without further explanation; a Munda etymological dictionary still is only
in the planning and collection stage, not to speak of Burushaski and other
languages of the subcontinent.
Instead, etymological discussions deal, by and large, with vague
similarities of ancient Vedic, old Dravidian and modern Munda words which,
to quote (pseudo-)Voltaire: etymologies, "where consonants count
little and vowels nothing." How complex it is to establish a proper etymology
actually can be checked by taking a look at K. Hoffmann's and E. Tichy's
36 rules of procedure (Hoffmann 1992).
In sum, there are clear and decisive rules in place that allow
to narrow down, and in many instances even to determine the origin of Vedic
words. Throwing up one's hands in post-modern despair (Bryant 1999), and
certainly, the haughty, non-technical dismissal (Talageri 2000) are misguided.
The range of the non-Indo-Aryan words of the RV is perhaps even
more interesting than their number. They include names for local plants
and animals,[N.64] and also a large number of terms for agriculture --
precisely those terms which are not expected in the vocabulary of the largely
pastoralist Indo-Aryans who left the tedious job of the ploughman (kinAza)
and farming in general (tilvila, phala, pippala, khala, lAGgala, etc.)
to the local people. Instead, they preserved only a few general IE terms,
such as yava 'barley, grain', kRS 'to scratch, plough', sA 'to sow', sItA
'furrow', sIra 'plough' (see however, EWA II 733 for the problematics of
the root sA). Some local river names, always a very resistant part of the
vocabulary, were preserved as well.[N.65]
In sum, an early wave of acculturation of the immigrant speakers
of Old IA (Vedic) and the local population has seriously influenced even
the IA poetic language and many other aspects of their traditional IIr.
culture, religion and ritual. This ''Indianization'' of the Indo-Aryans
began even before our extant RV texts (Kuiper 1967, 1991). A certain amount
of codification of this process can be detected with the formulation, in
the puruSa hymn (RV 10.90), of the system of the four classes (varNa)
instead of the more common IE three, which system has been called, by P.
Mus, ''the first constitution of India''.

On the Iranian side, however, one has observed, so far, very little
of linguistic and other acculturation (Skaervo 1995). It would indeed be
surprising, how little O.Pers. and the other Iranian languages seem to
have been affected by the preceding (substrate) languages of great cultures
such as those of the BMAC area, Shahr-i Sokhta, Mundigak, Yahya Tepe
and Elam, all of which amounts to nothing that would be comparable to the
influx of Dravidian, Munda or other local words into Rgvedic Sanskrit.
However, this is an erroneous impression, due to the surprising neglect
by Iranists of etymological studies of Old Iranian (not to speak of Middle
Iranian where we even do not have comprehensive dictionaries). There are,
indeed, quite a number of words that are foreign even in Indo-Iranian (Witzel
1995, 1999 a,b, Lubotsky, forthc.)[N.66] and there is a host of unstudied
Iranian words taken from the various local substrates (Witzel 1999 a,b,
forthc. b).
While we can observe the changes common to all Iranian languages
(s > h, p, t, k + consonant > f, th, x + cons., etc.),
even Y. Avestan often seems quite archaic, both in grammar and also in
vocabulary, while Vedic seems to have progressed much more, towards Epic
and Classical Sanskrit (loss of injunctive, moods of the perfect, aorist
etc.). Iranian, for whatever reasons and in spite of the influx of local
words, simply was less affected by the substrate than Vedic Sanskrit. This
feature is of extreme importance in evaluating the linguistic materials
that speak for the immigration of speakers of Old Indo-Aryan into the subcontinent.

While the intrusive traits of Indo-Aryan language, poetics, large
parts of IA religion, ritual and some aspects of IA material culture
are transparent, the obvious continuity of local cultures in South Asia,
as seen in archaeology, is another matter. Yet, the question
to be asked, is: how much of the culture of semi-sedentary tribes
on the move (Scythians, Huns, Turks, Mongols) would indeed be visible in
the archaeological record? The remnants of the Huns, for example, have
been found only recently in some Hungarian graves; otherwise we would only
know about them from the extensive literary and historical record. To put
it facetiously, the Huns have been in Europe only for some 20 years.[N.67]
Secondly, the constantly shifting river courses in the Panjab may have
obscured many of the shallow remnants of the Indo-Aryan settlements: temporary,
rather rickety resting places (armaka, Rau 1983), not big brick buildings.
Thirdly, the Indo-Aryans are known, from their own texts, to
employ the services of the local populations for agriculture (RV, Kuiper
1955, 1991; for washing (Witzel 1986), and especially for pottery (Rau
1983): only sacred vessels are made by Brahmins in the most archaic fashion,
without the use of a wheel (as is still done in the Hindukush!) Such Vedic
pottery, always executed in the same traditional manner, is therefore undatable
simply by style, even if found. Everyday vessels, on the other hand, were
made by low class (zUdra) workmen (see below § 24). Continuity of
local styles thus is to be expected a priori. However, when traditional
style pottery with traditional paintings, such as in the early post-Indus
Cemetery H culture, appears together with a new burial style, that is cremation
or exposition and subsequent deposition of the bones in urns, and with
a new motif painted on them, i.e. a small human, a 'soul', drawn
inside a traditionally painted peacock, then all of this draws our attention.
The bird-soul motif seems to reflect Vedic beliefs about the souls of the
ancestors moving about in the form of birds (Vats 1940, Witzel 1984, Falk
1986). While this assemblage seems to indicate early acculturation, more
data would be necessary in order to turn the still little known Cemetery
H culture in Harappa and Cholistan into one that would definitely reflect
Indo-Aryan presence.
Presence of Indo-Aryan speakers would rather be indicated by
the introduction of their specialty, the horse drawn chariots with spoked
wheels, horse furnishings, etc. When such items are found, there is a good
chance that this represents Indo-Aryans, but alternative scenarios cannot
be excluded: tribes that were influenced and/or pushed forward in front
of them, such as the Mitanni and Kassites in Mesopotamia and the Hyksos
in Egypt; or, simply, neighboring local tribes that early on adopted Indo-Aryan
material culture.
Ideally, an ''Aryan'' archaeological site would include the remnants
of horses and chariots, horse furnishings, a Vedic ritual site with three
fire places nearby (preferably west of a river), a rather primitive settlement
pattern with bamboo huts, implements made of stone and copper (bronze),
some gold and silver ornaments, but with local pottery, evidence
of food that includes barley, milk products, meat of cattle, sheep and
goat, and of some wild animals. However, this particular archaeological
set (or part of it) has not yet been discovered, unless we think of the
Swat Valley finds, c. 1400 BCE. Swat is an area known in the RV 8.19.37
as Indo-Aryan territory, suvAstu ''good ground,'' however, with sponsors
of sacrifice that bear strange names: vayiyu, prayiyu.[N.68]
In sum, we have to look out for a 'Leitfosssil', clear indicators
of Indo-Aryan culture such as the chariot and Vedic ritual sites. The obvious
continuity of pottery styles, taken alone, tells little. Some archaeologists
such as Shaffer simply restrict themselves to report the findings of archaeology
and intentionally neglect all the linguistic and spiritual data of the
texts; in fact, some denounce them as 'linguistic tyranny' (Shaffer 1984).
While this procedure may be perfectly in order for someone who simply wants
to do archaeology, this approach is not sufficient to approach the early
history of the subcontinent. All aspects of material and spiritual culture,
of linguistics as well as genetics, have to be taken into account.

Advocates of the autochthonous theory, however, also maintain
that there is not any evidence of demographic discontinuity in archaeological
remains during the period from 4500 to 800 BCE,[N.69] and that an influx
of foreign populations is not visible in the archaeological record. The
remnants of the Harappans, the Harappan Cemetery H people etc., all are
physically very close to each other, while the people of Mohenjo Daro stand
somewhat apart. In other words: 'Aryan bones' have not been found. (Kennedy
1995, 2000, cf. Meadow 1991, 1997,1998).
The revisionists and indigenists overlook, however, that such
refutations of an immigration by 'racially' determined Indo-Aryans still
depend on the old, 19th century idea of a massive invasion of outsiders
who would have left a definite mark on the genetic set-up of the local
Panjab population. In fact, we do not presently know how large this particular
influx of linguistically attested outsiders was. It can have been relatively
small, if we apply Ehret's model (1988, derived from Africa, cf. Diakonoff
1985) which stresses the osmosis (or a 'billiard ball', or Mallory's Kulturkugel)
effect of cultural transmission.
Ehret (1988) underlines the relative ease with which ethnicity
and language shift in small societies, due to the cultural/economic/military
choices made by the local population in question. The intruding/influencing
group bringing new traits may initially be small and the features it contributes
can be fewer in number than those of the pre-existing local culture. The
newly formed, combined ethnic group may then initiate a recurrent, expansionist
process of ethnic and language shift. The material record of such shifts
is visible only insofar as new prestige equipment or animals (the "status
kit", with new, intrusive vocabulary!) are concerned. This is especially
so if pottery -- normally culture-specific -- continues to be made by local
specialists of a class-based society.
Similarly, Anthony (1995): "Language shift can be understood
best as a social strategy through which individuals and groups compete
for positions of prestige, power, and domestic security... What is
important, then, is not just dominance, but vertical social mobility and
a linkage between language and access to positions of prestige and power...
A relatively small immigrant elite population can encourage widespread
language shift among numerically dominant indigenes in a non-state
or pre-state context if the elite employs a specific combination of encouragements
and punishments. Ethnohistorical cases ... demonstrate that small elite
groups have successfully imposed their languages in non-state situations."
Furthermore, even when direct evidence for immigration and concurrent
language takeover is absent, the texts often allow such deductions, as
has been well articulated by W. von Soden (1985: 12, my transl.) with regard
to the much better known history of Mesopotamia: "The study of languages
and the comparison of language provide better possibilities for conclusions
with regard to migrations in prehistoric times. New languages never are
successful without the immigration of another group of people [different
from the local one]. Influences of [such] other languages can be determined
in vocabulary and certain grammatical formations. The older languages of
an area, even when they are no longer spoken, continue to influence the
younger languages as substrates, not in the least in their sound system;
new, dominant classes influence the language of the conquered as superstrates
in many ways. In the early period, the influences of substrates and superstrates
are always discernible only to a certain degree."
Similar things could be said about Ancient Greece, but that would
lead to far here. As will be seen below, the three descriptions given just
now fit the Indus/Vedic evidence perfectly.

THE AUTOCHTHONOUS ARYAN THEORY

§11. The ''Aryan Invasion'' and the "Out of India"
theories

The preceding sketch presupposes that groups speaking Old IA (Vedic)
were an intrusive element in the North-West of the subcontinent. Since
language is of crucial importance for this argument, it needs to be addressed
here in great detail. However, the revisionists and autochthonists have
almost completely overlooked this type of evidence, or they have outrightly
denied it. Recently, some have begun to pay attention (see discussion by
Bryant 1999, cf. also Elst 1999), however, still in an unprofessional manner
(Talageri 1993, 2000).[N.70] Unfortunately, this was in large measure even
true for the apparently lone Indo-European scholar in India, S.S. Misra[N.71]
(1992).
Any immigration scenario is strenuously denied by two groups
of Indian scholars: first, the revisionists, who genuinely try to reconsider
the writing of ancient Indian history which they believe was very much
the creation of 19th century British political ideology, and second, the
autochthonists who try to show (or who simply believe in) an indigenous
origin of the 'Aryans' in the subcontinent. Of course, one can find various
combinations of these two strands in any person's writing (see Bryant 1999).[N.72]
The theories of advocates of an autochthonous origin of the Indo-Aryans
(always called "Aryans") range from (1) a mild version, insisting
on the origin of the Rgvedic Indo-Aryans in the Panjab, the ''autochthonous''
or indigenous school (Aurobindo, Waradpande 1993, S. Kak 1994a, etc., see
Elst 1999: 119, Talageri 2000: 406 sqq, Lal 1997: 281 sqq.), (2) a
more stringent but increasingly popular ''Out of India''
school (S.S. Misra, Talageri, Frawley, Elst, etc.) which views the Iranians
and even all Indo-Europeans emigrating from the Panjab, to the (3) most
intense version, which has all languages of the world derived from
Sanskrit: the ''devabhASA school'', which is mostly -but not solely-
restricted to traditional Pandits.[N.73] (For summaries see Hock 1999,
Talageri 2000.)
In these views,[N.74] though often for quite different reasons,
any immigration or trickling in (nearly always called ''invasion'') of
the (Indo-)Aryans into the subcontinent is suspect or simply denied: The
Arya of the RV are supposed to be just another tribe or group of
tribes that always have been resident in India, next to the Dravidians,
Mundas, etc. The theory of an immigration of IA speaking Arya (''Aryan
invasion'') is seen as a means of British policy to justify their own intrusion
into India and their subsequent colonial rule: in both cases, a 'white
race' was seen as subduing the local darker-colored population.
The irony of this line of reasoning is that the British themselves
have been subject to numerous IE immigrations and invasions (Celts, Romans,
Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Danish, and Normans -- and now Caribbeans and South
Asians). Even more ironically, there is a strong non-Indo-European substratum
in English which has left such common words as sheep.[N.75] The "Proto-Anglo-Saxons",
and in fact all of Europe, have been subject to the same kind of Indo-European
"invasions". Europeans and Indians alike could thus complain, for example
with M. Gimbutas (1991, 1994), about the domination of a "peaceful matriarchal
agricultural community" by half-barbaric, patriarchal, semi-nomadic and
warlike invaders. However, this is not an issue in Europe (e.g., my own,
predominantly Basque genes do not protest loudly against having been
subjected to an IE language and culture several millennia ago), while religious
and nationalistic attitudes in India have made such "invasions" the issue
in recent years. European Indologists, and American or Japanese even less,
do not have an axe to grind, here and now. Even less so, after the recent
genetic discoveries that link all present humans to a fairly recent origin
and all non-Africans to an even more recent emigration by some 10,000 people
Out of Africa, 50,000 years ago: the problem of an "Aryan invasion" into
India is as relevant or irrelevant to Indologists as a Bantu "invasion"
of central, east and southern Africa, or an Austronesian immigration into
the Pacific or a Na-Dene one into North America.

§ 11.1. Procedure

Like all scientific theories, however, the theory of an immigration
into South Asia by speakers of IA has to be constantly and thoroughly (re-)investigated,
and it has to be established whether (all) aspects of it and/or the theory
itself are correct or not. But this must be done on the basis of
hard facts, not, due to a dislike of earlier historical writing, by a selective
use of or by twisting of facts, or simply by sophistic argumentation (see
below, on current use of long-refuted propositions). It also has to be
done independently both from the present climate in India, and from the
present western post-modern/deconstructionist fashion of seeing political
motives behind all texts; both attitudes are not conducive in this kind
of investigation.
Scholars of the 19th/20 cent. obviously did not have the present
discussion in mind when they wrote. The best ones among them may
have come to certain conclusions quite independently of their 'ideological'
background. At any rate, the better scholars of the 19th century were not
colonialists or racists. They all were, however, limited to some extent
by the general zeitgeist of the period, but so are present day scholars.
We, too, must constantly strive to overcome this bias (Witzel 1999d), and
we also must not to follow one current trend or momentary fashion after
another. We can only approach a solution by patiently investigating the
pros and contras of the various points that have been made -- or still
are to be made. Scholarship is an ongoing dialectical process.
One should avoid, therefore, to revert to long-refuted propositions.
Natural scientists, other than historians, do not seriously discuss pre-Copernican
or pre-Darwinian systems any longer. In the subsequent sections, all too
frequently old and long given up positions are brought up and juxtaposed
to recent ones in order to show 'contradictions' in what is called 'the
western approach'. This is improper procedure. In the same way, one should
also not confound the autochthonous theories of the past two centuries
(Dayanand Sarasvati, etc.) with the present wave of indigenism, and one
cannot, therefore, accuse the present autochthonous and 'Out of India'
movement for contradictions with the older position of Tilak of an original
Arctic home of the Aryans, (even though it has been repeated quite recently
in Ganapati's SV-translation (1982) where the 'Aryans' are portrayed as
having lived "on the Polar circle").
In the natural sciences and in scholarship at large, old conclusions
are constantly reviewed on the basis of new evidence. But such new evidence
has to fit in with the general framework established by the many, completely
unrelated observations in the various branches of scholarship; otherwise
a particular theory is revised or discarded. For example, when certain
irregularities in the course of the planets were noticed, it did not mean
that post-Renaissance astronomy was wrong but that this observation was
due to the mass of another planet, Pluto, that was correctly predicted
and, then, actually discovered in the early 20th century. But, the opposite
procedure, deducing a "paradigm shift" based on isolated facts, is quite
common in the contemporary effort to rewrite Indian (pre-)history.
Unfortunately, thus, the subsequent discussion is studded with
examples that explain away older theories and even hard scientific facts
with the help of new, auxiliary, ad hoc assumptions. All of which are then
used to insist that we are due for a "paradigm shift". Consequently,
it will unfortunately take much more space even to merely describe and
then to evaluate the arguments of the autochthonous school(s) than to describe
the older, general consensus. All too frequently, we have to reinvent the
wheel, so to speak, and have to restate, and sometimes even to prove,
well-known and well-tested principles and facts: this includes those of
comparative linguistics (summaries by Hock 1986, Anttila 1989, Szemere'nyi
1970, 1996, Beekes 1995), comparative epic studies (Parry 1930, 1971, Lord
1991), of S. Asian archaeology (Allchin 1995, Kenoyer 1998, Possehl 1999),
Indus epigraphy (Possehl 1996), of zoology and botany (Meadow 1997,1998),
or the evidence contained in the texts, as established by philology over
the past two centuries (Witzel 1997).

§ 11.2. Evidence

For the subsequent discussion, is also very important that each
single item be scrutinized well before it is brought forward. At
present, we can observe a cult of 'science' in India, --I have even
seen 'scientific tax forms.' However, this is part of an inclusivistic
belief system that encapsulates, in facile fashion, older mythical
and religious ideas (Witzel 1986, 1992, 1998). Further, in spite of the
stress on the 'hard sciences', all too frequently 'scientific facts' are
quoted which, on closer observation, are not hard facts at all. For example,
an unsuspecting reader may take for granted that "LANDSAT photos
show the drying up of the sarasvatI river in 1900 BCE" (Kak 1994, cf. S.P.
Gupta 1995). But LANDSAT or aerial photos cannot by themselves indicate
historical dates. (For an update, with much more cautious claims by scientists,
see now Radhakrishnan and Merh 1999). Or, some selected linguistic data,
such as a supposed (but demonstrably wrong!) change from an older azva-
'horse' (as in Skt.) to Latin equu-s (S.S. Misra 1992), are used to indicate
an Iranian and IE emigration from India. This does not only contradict
standard (IE and non-IE) linguistic knowledge (see now Hock 1999). It also
neglects a whole range of further contradictory evidence, e.g. the
host of local, non-IA loan words in Vedic Skt. that are missing in the
supposedly 'emigrating' languages such as Iranian, Slavic, etc. (Witzel
1999 a,b; for details, below § 13 sqq.)
Other inconsistencies derive from the evidence of the texts.
If the RV is to be located in the Panjab, and supposedly to be dated well
before the supposed 1900 BCE drying up of the sarasvatI, at 4-5000 BCE
(Kak 1994, Misra 1992), the text should not contain evidence of the domesticated
horse (not found in the subcontinent before c. 1700 BCE, see Meadow 1997,1998,
Anreiter 1998: 675 sqq.), of the horse drawn chariot (developed only about
2000 BCE in S. Russia, Anthony and Vinogradov 1995, or Mesopotamia), of
well developed copper/bronze technology, etc. If the brAhmaNas are supposedly
to be dated about 1900 BCE (Kak 1994), they should not contain evidence
of the use of iron which makes it appearance in India only at the end of
the millennium, about 1200 BCE at the earliest (Chakrabarti 1979, 1992,
see now Possehl-Gullapalli 1999 for a much later date of c. 1000/900 BCE).
The list could be prolonged, and some of these items will be discussed
below (§ 11 sqq.)

§ 11.3. Proof

In short, the facts adduced from the various sciences that have
been operating independently from each other and independently from
the present 'Aryan' question -- in most cases actually without any knowledge
of the Aryan discussion, -- must match, before a certain theory can be
accepted. If the linguistic, textual, archaeological, anthropological,
geological, etc. facts contradict each other, the theory is in serious
difficulty. All exceptions have to be explained, and well within plausible
range; if they cannot, the theory does not hold. It never is proper working
procedure that such inconsistencies are explained away by ad hoc assumptions
and new theories, in other words, by special pleading. Occam's razor applies.
We can no longer maintain, for example, that the earth is flat and then
explain away the evidence of aerial or space photos by assuming, e.g.,
some effect of light refraction in the upper strata of the atmosphere,
or worse, by using one conspiracy theory or the other.

§ 11.4. The term "invasion"

To begin, in any discussion of the 'Aryan problem', one has to
stress vehemently that the ''invasion model'' which was still prominent
in the work of archaeologists such as Wheeler (1966: "Indra stands accused"),
has been supplanted by much more sophisticated models[N.76] over the past
few decades (see Kuiper 1955 sqq., Witzel 1995, Thapar 1968). It must also
be underlined that this development has not occurred because Indologists
were reacting, as is now frequently alleged, to current Indian criticism
of the older theory.[N.77] Rather, philologists first, and archaeologists
somewhat later, noticed certain inconsistencies in the older theory and
tried to find new explanations, thereby discovering new facts and proposing
a new version of the immigration theories.
For some decades already, linguists and philologists such as
Kuiper 1955, 1991, Emeneau 1956, Southworth 1979, archaeologists such as
Allchin 1982, 1995, and historians such as R. Thapar 1968, have maintained
that the Indo-Aryans and the older local inhabitants ('Dravidians', 'Mundas',
etc.) have mutually interacted from early on, that many of them were in
fact frequently bilingual, and that even the RV already bears witness to
that. They also think, whether explicitly following Ehret's model (1988,
cf. Diakonoff 1985) or not, of smaller infiltrating groups (Witzel 1989:
249, 1995, Allchin 1995), not of mass migrations or military invasions.
However, linguists and philologists still maintain, and for good reasons,
that some IA speaking groups actually entered from the outside, via some
of the (north)western corridors of the subcontinent.
The autochthonous theory, however, maintains that there has not
been any influx at all, of Indo-Aryans or of other people from outside,
conveniently forgetting that most humans have emigrated out of Africa only
50,000 years ago. On the contrary, some of its adherents simply reverse
the 'colonial' invasion theory, with post-colonial one-up-manship, as an
emigration from India (the 'Out of India Theory, OIT). Its advocates like
to utilize some of the arguments of current archaeology, for example those
of J. Shaffer (1984, 1995, 1999). He stresses indigenous cultural continuity
from c. 7000 BCE well into the semi-historic times of the first millennium,
as is evident according to the present state of archaeology.
Consequently, he protests the ''linguistic tyranny'' of earlier models.
This is a much too narrow, purely archaeological view that neglects
many other aspects, such as all of spiritual and some of material culture,
but it is grist on the mills of the autochthonists.
To get, finally, to some concrete, be it necessarily often torturous,
detail: opponents of the theory of an IA immigration or trickling in, whether
revisionists, indigenists, or OIT adherents must especially explain the
following linguistic, textual, archaeological, geographical, astronomical,
and other scientific data (§12-31) to become credible.

§ 11.5. Linguistics

As has been mentioned above, linguistic data have generally been
neglected by advocates of the autochthonous theory. The only exception
so far is a thin book by the Indian linguist S.S. Misra (1992) which bristles
with inaccuracies and mistakes (see below) and some, though incomplete
discussion by Elst (1999).[N.78] Others such as Rajaram (1995: 144, 217)
or Waradpande (1993), though completely lacking linguistic expertise, simply
reject linguistics as "pseudo-science" with "none of the checks and balances
of a real science". They simply overlook the fact that a good theory predicts,
as has occurred in IE linguistics several times (i.e., in predicting pre-Greek
*kw or the IE laryngeals, see below §12.1). On the other hand
one may still consult, with profit, the solid discussion of early Sanskrit
by Bh. Ghosh (1937).
The linguistic evidence, available since the earliest forms of
Sanskrit (Rgvedic OIA), is crucial, as the materials transmitted by language
obviously point to the culture of its speakers and also to their original
and subsequent physical surroundings. Language has, just as history, its
own 'archaeology'; the various subsequent historical 'layers' of a particular
language can be uncovered when painstakingly using well-developed linguistic
procedures.
Language study, however, is not something that can be carried
out by amateurs, even though a 'everyone can do' attitude is widespread.
This is especially pervasive when it comes to etymology and the (often
assumed) origin and the (frequently lacking) history of individual
words. Here, total amateurism is the rule. "Oakish" etymologies, such as
England from aGguli 'finger', or abAd from bath (Gupt@ 1990) have a long
tradition both in occidental as well as in Indian culture. Plato's Kratylos
propounds the same kind of unscientific explanations as yAska does in his
nirukta. This has been tradition ever since the brAhmaNa texts (rudra from
rud 'to cry', putra from the nonexistent word *put 'hell', bhairava
from bhI+rav+vam, etc.) A look into any recent or contemporary book on
Indian history or literature will bring to light many examples: Assyria
from asura, Syria from sura, Phoenicians from paNi, Hittites (Khet) from
kaTha, Mitanni from maitrAyaNIya, etc. (Bhagavad Datta repr. 1974, Surya
Kanta 1943, Gupt@ 1990, etc.).
In the South Asian context, cross-family comparison (Dravidian
and IA, IA and Arabic, etc.) is especially widespread and usually completely
wrong, as such comparisons are simply based on overt similarities between
words. In comparative linguistics, however, it is not similarity that counts
but the regularity of (albeit outwardly, non-intuitive) sound correspondences,
for example Vedic zv in azva 'horse' : Avest. -sp- : O.Pers. -s- :
Lith. -sw-, Latin -qu- [kw] : Gothic -hv- OHG -h-, O.Irish -ch-,
Gaul. -p-, Toch. -k/kw- < IE *k'w, an equation repeated in many
other words; or, to quote one of the most hackneyed, non-intuitive examples:
the correct equation, sound by sound, of Skt. dvA(u), Latin duo =
Armenian erku < IE *dwO(u).
Since language and (the necessarily closely connected) spiritual
culture are crucial for any theory of an influx of speakers of OIA into
the subcontinent --whatever form this influx might have taken initially--
the linguistic evidence will be dealt with in detail in the following sections.
Unfortunately, since the linguistic ideas and 'arguments' of the autochthonists
are far off the accepted norms and procedures, a discussion of their proposals
and beliefs does not only take up much space but must be convoluted and
torturous; in addition, it must be, in its very nature, often very technical.
(The non-linguistically inclined reader may therefore prefer to jump to
the concluding sections of
§18).

§12. Vedic, Iranian and Indo-European

It is undeniable and has indeed hardly been denied even by most
stalwart advocates of the autochthonous theory, that Vedic Sanskrit is
closely related to Old Iranian and the other IE languages.[N.79] However,
this relationship is explained in a manner markedly differing from the
standard IE theories, that is by an emigration westwards of the Iranians
and the other Indo-Europeans from the Panjab (see below).
Vedic Sanskrit is indeed so closely related to Old Iranian
that both often look more like two dialects than two separate languages
(e.g. tam mitram yajAmahe : t@m mithr@m yazamaide 'we worship Mitra').
Any Avestan speaker staying for a few weeks in the Panjab would have been
able to speak Vedic well and --with some more difficulty - vice versa.
However, that does not necessitate at all that the Old Iranian dialects
were introduced to into Iran from the east, from India, as the autochthonist
would have it. As will be seen below (§ 12 sqq.), there are a number
of features of Old Iranian (such as lack of typical South Asian substrate
words, § 13 sqq.) which actually exclude an Indian origin. Such data
have not been discussed yet by the autochthonists.

The comparison of the many common features found in Vedic Indo-Aryan
and Old Iranian have led to the reconstruction of a common 'mother' tongue,
Indo-Iranian, spoken (at least) around 2000 BCE, by a group of people that
shared a common spiritual and material culture (see § 4-5). Beyond
that, the comparison of Indo-Iranian and other IE languages has allowed
similar reconstructions for all IE languages from Iceland and Ireland to
Xinjiang (Tocharian) and from the Baltic Sea (Lithuanian etc.) to
Turkey (Hittite) and the Panjab (Vedic IA). This theory was first developed
in the early 19th century and has been tested extensively. If there were
still need of proof, one may point to the many predictions the theory has
made, especially after its more developed form had emerged, about 1870
CE, with the establishment of regular sound correspondences (Lautgesetze)
by the Leipzig Junggrammatiker school. Such cases include the rather old
prediction of early Greek/pre-Greek *kw which was discovered in writing
when Mycenean Greek was deciphered in 1952, or the prediction by the young
F. de Saussure more than a century ago (1879), of a set of unknown sounds.
These were later called laryngeals (h1, h2, h3). They have disappeared
in all known IE languages but have affected their surroundings in typical,
to a large extent even then predictable ways. When Hittite finally was
read in 1916, h2 was still found written (in words such as peHur = Gk.
pUr = Engl. fire).
Yet, some revisionists and indigenists even call into question
the theories and well-tested methods of comparative linguistics. Some of
them clearly do so because of a considerable lack of understanding of the
principles at work (Waradpande 1989, Kak 1994a, Talageri 2000, etc.; discussion
in Bryant 1999, cf. Elst 1999). In addition, they make use of the expected
scholarly differences of opinion between linguists to show the whole "theory
of (IE) linguistics" does not work or is an "unproved theory" (Rajaram
1995: 144, 217), thereby neglecting such well known facts as: (a) that
any science progresses and that certain opinions of the 19th cent. cannot
be juxtaposed to those of the 20th, and (b) that in any contemporary
field of science[N.80] there is a certain range of generally agreed facts
but also a certain range of difference of opinion, such as between traditionalists,
radical skeptics,[N.81] and those proposing new solutions to old or recently
noticed problems. In short, there always are conflicting interpretations
of the materials at hand that are discussed in dialectical fashion. Some
interpretations are merely possible, others probable, and still others
have actually been proved and have subsequently been shown to be correct.
In present day genetics, for example, some still hold that the recently
developed theory of an origin of all humans from one or from a small group
of African ancestors is not valid as it involves misinterpretation of statistical
data and the wrong type of computer models. However, nobody has claimed
that genetic investigation as such is invalid, as has been done with regard
to comparative linguistics by autochthonists on and off, or who
say that it remains an 'unproved theory at best'. Unfortunately for this
view, historical linguistics, just like any good science, has made a number
of predictions that later on, with the discovery of new materials, have
been shown to be correct (see above).

§ 12.1. The Misra case

Worse, the recent book of an Indian linguist, S.S. Misra
(1992), is even a step back beyond what is demonstrable and, strangely
for a linguist, often beyond the hard facts, i.e. his denial of PIE laryngeals
as precursors of the actually written Hittite laryngeal sounds (Misra 1974,
1992). He simply rewrites, on an ad hoc basis, much of IE (and general)
linguistics. The discussion and explanation of his examples (e.g., his
supposed IE *z > k', *a > e, o, a etc.) would have to be quite technical
and is not pursued here in detail. (It has now been discussed by Hock,
1999). It is however, obvious even to an uninitiated observer that forms
such as Skt. cakAra (instead of *kakAra) must rely on the palatalizing
effect of an e-like sound in ca-; cf. the Romance development from
c [k] as seen in old loan-words, German Kaiser, Greek kaisar (whence
Urdu kaisar), to Romance c [ts'], as seen in Ital. Cesare or even
to [s] as in Engl. Cesar; cf. also the separate development
Vulgar Latin caballus 'horse' > French cheval, etc., again before -e-.
These changes are a feature known from many languages. Why should it only
have been different for pre-Rgvedic (and pre-Old Iranian, in other worlds,
for Indo-Iranian) as Misra maintains? A case of special pleading.
The whole matter of Misra's IE reconstructions has been discussed
adequately by H.H. Hock (1999) and there is no need to go into further
details here. In sum, Misra's ad hoc rules do not make for a new
system,[N.82] they are, in fact, a throwback, a regression to the early
stages of IE comparative linguistics when strict rules of sound correspondences
(Lautgesetze) had not yet been established by the Leipzig Junggrammnatiker
School of c. 1870.
His dating of the RV, based on this "new" reconstruction, simply
rests on the similarity of his "early 19th cent." Proto-IE (looking altogether
like Sanskrit) with reconstructed Proto-Finno-Ugric (Uralic) forms,
for which he accepts the guess of Uralic linguists, a date of 5000 BCE.
That guess is not any better than the various guesses for PIE, at 3000
or 4500 BCE. Misra's whole system rests on guesswork and on demonstrably
faulty reconstructions.
It simply is uncontested among linguists of any persuasion that
the remarkable grammatically regular features of Proto-IE (underlying,
e.g., the differences in the present tense formation of Sanskrit, German,
French asti, ist, est :: santi, sind, sont, < IE *h1e's-ti :: *h1s-o'nti)
are part and parcel of the parent language, the original PIE. This was
at first confined to an unknown area in a temperate (not a tropical!) climate.[N.83]
This scenario is in stark contrast to the certainty with which autochthonist
place the homeland of IE inside South Asia or even inside certain parts
of India (Misra 1992), even more precisely in the Gangetic basin (Talageri
1993, 2000), not exactly unexpectedly,[N.84] in their own home land,
India. (For this familiar 'principle' used in deciding the Urheimat, see
Witzel 2000, and below).
On the other hand, the autochthonous school maintains that the
very assumptions at the basis of the genealogical, family tree model of
the Indo-European language family, deride it (cf. Elst 1999: 119, see discussion
by Bryant 1999), or contest it just for the Indian linguistic area (see
below). This is quite old news: various models have been proposed and tested
for the development from Proto-Indo-European to the individual languages:
the ''family tree'' model (A. Schleicher's Stammbaumtheorie, 1861-2), a
theory of dialectal waves of innovation emanating from a certain center
(Joh. Schmidt's Wellentheorie, 1872). Further, socio-linguistic theories
include the development of Proto-Indo-European as a sort of camp
language (another Urdu, so to speak), a new Pidgin, based on diverse original
languages that eventually spread beyond its own rather limited boundaries,
for example with the introduction of horse-based pastoralism (Anthony and
Vinogradov 1995, Kuz'mina 1994, etc.).
Some advocates of the autochthonous theory (Kak 1994, Talageri
1993, 2000, Elst 1999: 159) use rather simplistic linguistic models, such
as the suggestion that population increase, trade, the emergence of agriculture,[N.85]
and large-scale political integration led to the extinction of certain
languages and to a transfer of other languages across ethnic groups. However,
all such factors have been considered over the past two hundred years or
so; none of them, in isolation, nor a combination of all of them, lead
to the surprising spread of Indo-European languages inside and outside
the subcontinent. In fact, most of the factors just mentioned were not
present during the early Vedic period which saw the introduction and spread
of IA all over the Greater Panjab.
Autochthonists further neglect that language replacement, such
as visible during the Vedic period, depends on a range of various socio-linguistic
factors and not simply on the presence of nomads, increasing population
density, etc. Rather, the situation differs from case to case, and the
important factors for any particular replacement must be demonstrated.
For example, Renfrew's (1987) model of a very gradual spread of IE from
Anatolia, along with agriculture, has not generally been accepted. If this
agriculturally induced spread had taken place, I would be writing this
paper in a descendent language of the non-IE Hattic of Turkey, and not
in IE English. In the case of early India, the change from the language(s)
of the urbanized Indus civilization to that of the pastoralist Indo-Aryans
must be explained. It certainly cannot be done (see below) by positioning
the homeland of the 'non-tropical' IE language inside India (Talageri 1993,
2000, Elst 1999: 118 sqq.) and make its speakers emigrate, across the Indus
area, towards Iran and Europe.

§12.2 Language and 'Out of India' theories

Theoretically, a scenario of IE emigration from the Panjab is
of course possible, --- the direction of the spread of languages and linguistic
innovations cannot easily be determined, unless we have written materials
(preferably inscriptions). However, some linguistic observations such as
the distribution of languages, dialect features, substrate languages, linguistic
palaeontology, etc. allow to argue against the Out of India scenarios.
The Out of India theorists such as Elst (1999:122, 124
etc.), Talageri (1993, 2000) envision an IE homeland in South Asia, to
be more precise, in the Gangetic basin. Talageri simply assumes, without
any linguistic (or archaeological, palaeontological) sources and proof,
that in "prehistoric times the distribution of the languages in India
may have been roughly the same as it is today: viz. the Dravidian languages
being spoken in the south, Austric in the east, the Andamanese languages
in the Andaman Islands, the Burushaski language in N. Kashmir, Sino-Tibetan
languages in the Himalayan and far eastern border areas, and the Indo-European
languages certainly in more or less their present habitat in most of northern
India" (1993: 407). The rest follows logically: ..."a major part
of the Indo-Europeans of southeastern Uttar Pradesh migrated to the west
and settled down in the northwestern areas --- Punjab, Kashmir and the
further north-west, where they differentiated into three groups: the pÒrus
(in the Punjab), the anus (in Kashmir) and the druhyus (in northwestern
and Afghanistan)", (cf. Talageri 1993: 196, 212, 334, 344-5, 2000: 328,
263).[N.86] Of course, all of this is based on data about peoples "clearly
mentioned and described in the Puranas." Needless to say, this kind of
writing prehistory smacks of early 19th cent. writing of early European
and Near Eastern history according to the Bible and Herodotos,
before the ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian texts could be read. It
is based on a naive reliance on texts that were composed millennia after
the facts, and that are the product of a lively Bardic tradition (L. Rocher
1986, Brockington 1998, Parry 1971, Lord 1991), influenced by Brahmanical
redactors (Soehnen 1986, Horsch 1966). In spite of what Pargiter (1913)
and even Morton Smith (1973) have tried to establish --obviously, without
taking the later investigations into account-- we cannot write the history
of archaic and ancient India based on the legendary and late Epic and Puranic
accounts of the middle ages (Witzel 1990, 1995, 2001).
Talageri (1993: 407) continues his Puranic tale as follows: "...
major sections of anus ... developed into the various Iranian cultures.
The druhyus spread out into Europe in two installments." He actually knows,
somehow, which IE group moved first and which later, and by which route:
"the speakers of the proto-Germanic dialect first migrated northwards and
then westwards, and then later the speakers of the proto-Hellenic and proto-Italo-Celtic
dialects moved into Europe by a different, more southern, route. It is
possible that the speakers of proto-Baltic and proto-Slavonic (or proto-Balto-Slavonic)
... of proto-Illyrian and proto-Thraco-Phrygian ... were anus and not druhyus,
the anus and druhyus thus being, respectively, the speakers of proto- Satem
and proto-Kentum." (1993:407-8)
Or slightly differently (2000: 263): "The two emigrations ...
from an original homeland in India: ... The first series of
migrations, of the druhyus, took place.... with major sections of druhyus
migrating northwards from Afghanistan into Central Asia in different waves.
From Central Asia many druhyu tribes, in the course of time, migrated westwards,
reaching as far as western Europe. These migrations must have included
the ancestors of the following branches... a. Hittite. b. Tocharian.
c. Italic. d. Celtic. e. Germanic. f. Baltic. g. Slavonic.
.... The second series of migrations of anus and druhyus, took
place much later, in the Early Period of the Rigveda, with various tribes
migrating westwards from the Punjab into Afghanistan, many later on migrating
further westwards as far as West Asia and southwestern Europe. These migrations
must have included the ancestors of the following branches (which are mentioned
in the dAzrAjJa battle hymns): a. Iranian. b. Thraco-Phrygian (Armenian).
c. Illyrian (Albanian). d. Hellenic."
The strange or outdated terminology (Slavonic, etc. --his source
may be Misra's diction, see below-- Italo-Celtic, Kentum) indicates
the limited linguistic background of the author sufficiently enough. Nevertheless,
we also can learn of the solution to the long-standing enigma of the Indus
language (Parpola 1994, Witzel 1999 a,b): "The Indus Valley culture was
a mixed culture of purus and anus" (1993: 408). Nothing less, perhaps,
could be expected, as the book is self-described as: "This whole description
is based on the most logical and in many respects the only possible, interpretation
of the facts... Any further research, and any new material discovered on
the subject, can only confirm this description... there is no possible
way in which the location of the Original Homeland in the interior of northern
India, so faithfully recorded in the Puranas and confirmed in the Rigveda,
can ever be disproved" (1993: 408). Luckily for us, the author names his
two main sources: the purANas and the Rgveda. The reliability of Puranic
and Epic sources is discussed below (§19, Witzel 1990, 1995), and
the RV does not support his theory either (it simply does not know of,
or refer to central and eastern Northern India).[N.87]

§ 12.3. Emigration

In order to achieve his new U.P. homeland, Talageri has not only
to rely on the purANas, he also has to read them into his RV evidence,
though pretending to use only the RV to interpret the RV (Talageri 2000)
-- in fact one of the basic requirements of philology (Witzel 1995,
1997). In casu, the single two appearances of jahnAvI in the RV at 1.116.19
and 3.56.6 are made out to refer to the Ganges. However, both passages
clearly refer to a jahnAvI which translators and commentators (including
sAyaNa) have taken as a tribal designation (cf., indeed, such an 'ancestral
goddess' next to hotrA, bhAratI, iDA and sarasvatI at RV 2.1.11,
etc.). It is, thus, by no means clear that jahnAvI refers to a river,
and certainly not to the Ganges in particular (Witzel 2001). That is an
Epic/Puranic conceit. Instead, it can simply be derived from the jahnu
clan. Yet, it is in this way that Talageri tries to strengthen his
case for a Gangetic homeland: the Ganges is otherwise only mentioned twice
in the RV, once in a late hymn directly (10.75.5), and once by a derived
word, gAGgya (6.45.31, in a tRca that could be an even later addition
to this additional hymn, which is too long to fit the order of the
arrangement of the RV, see Oldenberg 1888). However, nothing in the RV
points to knowledge of the Gangetic basin, or even of the lower Doab. The
medieval and modern Doab rivers sarayu and gomatI[N.88] have sometimes
been mentioned but the context of these RV rivers is one of the western
hills and mountains, in Afghanistan.[N.89] Talageri's identification
of jahnAvI with gaGgA is clearly based on post-Vedic identifications;[N.90]
the RV passages only speak about an ancient clan (deity) which could have
'settled' anywhere.[N.91]
The evidence set forth by Talageri is not conclusive even for
the tribes of the RV, -- in fact the location of the yadu-turvaza, anu-druhyu
and pUru is not very clear for most of the Rgvedic period (Macdonell &
Keith 1912).[N.92] One hardly does have to mention the features that would
not agree with a 'tropical' PIE language in the Gangetic Basin (see §
12.6). As a curiosity, it might be added, however, that we certainly would
expect tribal names such as druhyu (or anu) in Europe, -- just as the Gypsies
have carried their tribal/caste name Domba to Europe, where they still
call themselves roma. However, we do not find any IE tribe or people
in Europe derived from Ved. druh / IE *dhreugh: there are no tribes called,
e.g., German Trug, Be-trueger, Engl. *Tray, Be-trayer -- we only find spirits:
'ghost' and 'apparition' (Pokorny 1959: 276).
In passing, it should be mentioned that the Epic and Puranic
accounts of the western neighbors of India are based on a view, already
found in ZB and BZS 18.13: 357.6 sqq, 18.44:397.8 sqq, that regards all
tribes and peoples outside the Center, the kuru(-paJcAla) realm, as 'outsiders'
(bAhIka ZB 1.7.3.8, udantya, mleccha, asurya). They are characterized by
their 'incorrect' speech and obnoxious behavior (ZB 9.3.1.24, Panjabis)
and lack of proper zrauta ritual (ZB 13.5.4.19, kAzi).
Consequently, both the Panjabis (bAhIka) as well as the
Benares (kAzi) and S. Bihar (aGga) people are denigrated by middle Vedic
texts.[N.93] This attitude mellowed somewhat with regard to eastern North
India (AB 7.18 where the andhra, puNDra, zabara, pulinda, etc. are included
as vizvAmitra's sons, Witzel 1997) but it continued with respect to the
west which was under constant and continuing threat of immigration, incursion
and actual invasion from the Afghan highlands (cf. Rau 1957: 14). In fact,
the Panjabis have been regarded as outsiders since the AV and ZB and pataJjali's
mahAbhASya has preserved the oldest "Sikh joke", gaur bAhIkaH 'the Panjabi
is an ox'. There is nothing new under the Indian sun.
There is, on the other hand, nothing particularly Indian about
this attitude, it is reflected not only in manu's concept of madhyadeza
(> mod. Nepali mades 'lowlands'), but also in ancient and modern
China (chung kuo, 'the middle land'), and elsewhere. Ritual, world wide,
often regards one's own location as the center of the universe (or its
navel/eye, o mata o te henua, in Polynesian).
The Epic and Puranic accounts simply build on such Vedic precedents:
the Panjabis are regarded as 'fallen Arya', or in the words of BZS, the
gandhAri have emigrated [from the center].[N.94] This is "the view from
the center", kurukSetra, a view that was not yet present in Rgvedic
times.[N.95] All of this is, incidentally, another indication of the (post-Rg)Vedic
attitude against 'outsiders', the Other. To regard the alleged, actually
mistranslated Puranic story (contra Witzel 2001, cf. n. 42, 86) about an
emigration from India as statement of facts is as far-fetched and mythological
as the Roman insistence of their descent from the heroes of Troy (Virgil's
Aeneid, see above §9), or as the many tales about the lost tribes
of Israel (note that the Pashtos, in spite of the E. Iranian language and
pre-Muslim IIr culture, claimed to be one of them). It is completely anachronistic,
and in fact unscientific, to use such legends, concocted long after the
fact, as indications of actual historical events. (The Gypsies, who actually
have emigrated from India, rather claim origins in S. Iraq or Egypt).

§12.4. Linguistics and 'Emigration'.

In addition, Talageri's new book merely restates, with the addition
of Epic-Puranic legends, what S.S. Misra had written before him in 1992,
just as so much of present autochthonous writing is nothing more
than a cottage industry exploitation of a now popular trend. Misra's small
book[N.96] of 110 pages, however, is a curious collection of linguistic
data spanning the Eurasian continent, from Tamil to Uralic (Finno-Ugric),
and from IE, Vedic and Mitanni Indo-Aryan to European Gypsy (Romani).
All of this with an equally curious conclusion: "the original
home of the Proto-Indo-European speech community... was searched in Pamir,
Caspian Sea etc. in spite of the fact that the most original and orthodox
Indo-European speech, Sanskrit, was spoken in India.... The following ground
may be assumed for dropping India. This was a nice place to live. People
would not like to go to places like Europe... On the other hand, there
is definite evidence of spread of Aryans (or Indo-Europeans) in different
parts of Europe... A brief sketch may be.... The Greeks were invaders and
came to Greece from outside... there was a vast substratum of pre-Greek
languages... the Celtic people came from outside to Europe... That the
Italic peoples were invaders is well-known... before the Hittite invasion
to the area [Turkey] it was peopled by another tribe called Hattic... the
Hittite speakers might have gone there in very early days from an
original home (which was perhaps India)... The Slavonic people ... were
invaders... at the expense of Finno-Ugrian and Baltic languages... The
Germanic speaking Indo-Europeans... coming from an outside world...
the movement of Iranians from India to Iran... The Finno-Ugrian contact
with Indo-Aryans speaks of the movement of Vedic Aryans from India to that
area. Therefore it is likely that Pre-Vedic Aryans also might have gone
out of India in several waves. The migrations from India to the outside
world might have taken the following order: The Centum speakers... in several
waves... Out of Sat@m speakers, Armenian first, the Albanian, next Baltic
followed by Slavonic. The Iranian people were the last to leave... based
on the linguistic analysis or relative affinity with Sanskrit. Similarly
out of the Centum groups Greek might have left India last of all." (Misra
1992: 100 sqq.) A lot of invasions into and all over Europe -- quite politically
incorrect now, it might be added, -- but no "invasion", not even an 'immigration"
or a meager "trickling" into India.
There is no need to belabor Misra's wording, such as 'orthodox'
(which language is 'orthodox'?), strange from the pen of a linguist. However,
Misra's main thesis, emigration from India, has already been refuted, on
linguistic grounds, by Hock (1999, see below) and I can be relatively brief
here; however, many ingredients and conclusions of Misra's book are faulty
as well. Since he is now quoted by OIT advocates as the major linguistic
authority who has provided proof for the OIT, these must be
discussed and summed up.

§ 12.5 Finno-Ugric data

Misra maintains (1992: 94) "the borrowed elements in the Uralic
languages show borrowed Rgvedic forms in 5000 BC." Unfortunately, his discussion
is based on two wrong premises: Harmatta's list of IA/Iranian loans in
Uralic[N.97] and Misra's own 'unorthodox' but faulty reinterpretation of
IIr and IA data.
To begin with, the date given by Misra to the RV "must be beyond
5000 BC" (1992) is based on the guess of Finno-Ugric scholars for Proto-FU,
a date just as good or bad as any given for PIE at 4500 or 3500 BCE. What
is of greater importance here is the exact form of IIr. that the various
loan words in PFU have preserved. In addition to Harmatta, some other scholars,
not mentioned by Misra, have worked on this problem as well, most recently
Joki 1973, Re'dei 1986, Katz (Habilschrift 1985).
Unfortunately, Harmatta has chosen to divide his materials into
eleven stages, ranging from 4500 - 1000 BCE, with an arbitrary length for
each period of 300 years. Worse, some of them have been placed at various
unlikely dates within that time frame, e.g., the development is >
is', which is already E. IE (Slavic, IIr, etc.) has been placed at 2000
BCE (as iz!), that is 600 later than the related changes rs > rs', ks >
ks', and the same development appears again as PIIr iz > is' at 1700
BCE. However, it is on this arrangement that Misra based his conclusions.
Though he corrects some of Harmatta's mistakes (such as misclassifying
IIr forms as PIran.), Misra makes things worse due to his clearly
faulty, 19th cent. type reconstruction of IE (see Hock 1999): "most
of the loan words ... are in fact to be traced to Indo-Aryan. Of special
importance is the borrowing traced to the earliest period (5000 BCE), which
is clearly Vedic Sanskrit" (1992: 24). This refers to words such as
Harmatta's FU *aja 'to drive, to hunt', *porc'as, porzas 'piglet',
*oc'tara 'whip', *c'aka 'goat', *erze 'male', *rezme 'strap', *meks'e 'honey
bee', *mete 'honey' (from Harmatta's stages 1-7). Most of these are actually
pre-IA as they retain c' > Ved. z, or s' instead of Ved. S, or the IE vowels
e, o instead of Common IIr and Ved. a.[N.98] His use of Harmatta's list
and that quoted from Burrow (1973: 23-27) and Abaev (1992: 27-32) suffer
from the same methodological fault: forms that easily can be derived from
IIr, such as Mordw. purtsos, purts (reflecting IIr *parc'as [partsas])
are declared by Misra as having come from the much later OIA (Vedic), in
spite of their retaining the old pronunciation c' [ts]; this is, in fact,
still found in Nuristani, e.g. du.c. [duts], < PIIr dac'a <
PIE dek'm, but not in the linguistically already younger, but historically
speaking c. 3000 years older forms Ved. daza, OIran. dasa! In short, this
kind of combination produces a great, but confused and confusing scenario.
Most of the acceptable evidence derived from Harmatta's data[N.99]
fall right into the Proto-IIr period. The shibboleth is the development
of PIE labiovelars to velars: *kw, kwh, gw, gwh > k, kh, g, gh, something
that is clearly seen in PFU *werkas 'wolf' < PIIr *vRka-s <
PIE *wlkwo-s (Misra, of course, takes this word as RV Sanskrit!). About
the same time, the PIE *k', k'h, g', g'h developed to c', c'h, j',
j'h. This development is clearly seen in the majority of the loans into
PFU, as in for example in *porc'as 'piglet', *c'aka 'goat', *aja 'to drive'.
(Misra derives these sounds from Skt. c, j, see Hock 1999). However, the
PIIr affricates are represented in PFU in two forms, either as expected
by c', or in the younger (= Vedic) form, by z[N.100] (late PIIr, not yet
OIran. s, and z preserved in Vedic).
Some confusion is raised by the various representations of PIIr
*a by PFU e, ae, o, a. This could, again, point to the pre-PIIr period
when the differences between e, o, a as inherited from PIE
were still preserved. In fact, -o- in these loan-words seems to be limited
to initial syllables, while other syllables have -a- or -e-. The problem
will be treated at length elsewhere (Witzel, forthc. b)[N.101].
The important result is, quite differently from that of Misra's
Sanskrit-like loans into PFU, the following: it was at the stage of PIIr
(perhaps even at that of late PIE) but certainly not that of Rgvedic Sanskrit,
that PFU has taken over a substantial number of loan words ranging from
plants and animals to customs, religion and the economy.[N.102]

§ 12.6. Dating of RV

The last section has, of course, serious consequences for Misra's
new dating of the RV, at 5000 BCE, which is anyhow impossible due
to internal contradictions (relating to the horse, chariot, etc., see below).
As the PFU loan-words point to pre-Rgvedic, PIIr. and even some (pre-)PIIr.
forms, the RV must be considerable later than the reconstructed PFU
(at 5000 BCE). All of which fits in well with the 'traditional' date for
this text, in the 2nd mill. BCE, roughly contemporary with Hittite, Mitanni
IA, and early, Mycenean Greek texts inscribed on tablets.

§ 12.7. Mitanni data

Misra's use of the Mitanni Indo-Aryan materials is clearly faulty
as well. They seem to fit in well (at dates around 1400 BCE) with his theory
of an early RV at 5000 BCE because he regards some of the Mitanni words
as representing Post-Vedic, Middle Indo-Aryan developments. He assumes
(repeated faithfully by Elst 1999:183) that there is MIA assimilation of
clusters in Mit. satta < Ved. sapta 'seven' (see n. 148), or replacement
of v- by b- as in biriya- < Ved. vIrya (rather, to be read as priya-,
see EWA I 139). However, such forms are due to the exigencies of
cuneiform writing and Hurrite pronunciation found in the Mitanni realm
(for details, see below §18). In sum, Misra's data are based
on his insufficient knowledge of near Eastern languages and their writing
systems.
However, it can even be shown that Mitanni IA words
belong to a pre-Rgvedic stage of IA as they have retained -zdh- > RV edh
and ai > RV e, and even IIr. j'h > Ved. h (see below §15, 18).
Thus, Misra's early "Middle Indo-Aryan" at 1400 BCE simply evaporates,
along with his early RV at 5000 BCE.[N.103] We are back to the 'traditional'
dates.

§ 12.8. Gypsy language

Though a detailed study of data from the Gypsy (Romany) language
seems to be beyond the scope of the present discussion, some words are
necessary as Misra has used the example of Gypsy as support for his
theory of sound changes that affected the hypothetical IE emigrants from
India when they entered the Near East and Europe. No matter that the two
movements, thousands of years apart, would refer to one of
PIE and the other to an MIA or ealry NIA language, and no matter that Romany
is not as well studied as PIE. While it is clear that "the Gypsy languages
are of Indo-Aryan origin is no more controversial..." it is not correct
to say that "the Gypsy dialects present sufficient evidence which shows
that Indo-Aryan a changed into a,e,o in European Gypsy..." (Misra 1992)
First of all, the emigrant Gypsies, probably first attested as
migrant musicians in records of the Sasanide kingdom of Iran (at 420 CE),
have retained a fairly old form of IA which looks, often enough, like MIA,
for example in the northwestern MIA retention of Cr (bhrAtA > phral 'brother'),
or the present tense of 'to do' (kara'v, kara's, kara'l, etc.) Misra hinted
at the reason why certain cases of MIA a have changed into Eur. Romani
e,a,o : their distribution seems to be based on occurrence of -a- in an
originally open syllable (in MIA, OIA) whence > e, or in a non-open syllable
whence > a. However, this change is by no means universal even in European
Romani. Its archaic Balkan version (of Bulgaria, etc., which I know from
personal experience) has kar-, kara'v etc. 'to do' (from karomi, as quoted
above). In short, Misra's data are again incomplete, faulty and misinterpreted.
Second, his contention that "Thus in a way the linguistic change
in Gypsy, suggests a clear picture of an assumption for a similar change
in Proto-Indo-European stage, of Indo-European a (as shown by Sanskrit
and as reconstructed by Bopp, Sleicher [sic!] etc.) into dialectical a,
e, o (as shown by Gk. etc.). Uptil now no evidence to the contrary
is available that Proto-Indo-European a, e, o (as reconstructed by Brugmann
etc.) have merged in India" (Misra 1992: 81) can easily be refuted by any
Indo-Europeanist (Hock 1999). In Greek, for example, we do not have a 'dialectal'
change, whatever that may mean, of Misra's IE *a > e, a, o but a
clearly regulated one, in the case of laryngeals 1-3 > e, a, o : IE *h1esti
> Gr. esti, Lat. est, but Ved. asti; h2ner- > Greek anEr, Ved. nR-, *h2enti
> Gr. anti, Lat. ante, Hitt. Hanti (with written laryngeal!) but Ved. anti,
*h3onkos > Gr. onkos, Lat. uncus, but Ved. aGku-Sa (Rix 1976: 68
sqq.). Not to speak of the well-established correspondences of PIE *e,
o, a in the various IE languages, which Misra simply denies on insufficient
grounds (for details, see Hock 1999).
In sum, Misra's contention that "Gypsy languages show a repetition
of the linguistic change, which occurred in a remote history of Indo-European,
when the original groups, speakers of various historical languages, left
their original homeland (India) and travelled to Europe... (1992: 82),
... the borrowed elements in the Uralic languages show borrowed Rgvedic
forms in 5000 BC... the date of RV must be beyond 5000 BC..." (1992: 94)
is based on insufficient materials, faulty interpretations and idiosyncratic
conclusions that are at odds with anyone else's in the field.[N.104]

§12.9 Contra: IE dialect clusters

Returning to the question of an IE homeland inside India, we can
easily observe where IE innovations seem to cluster, right from the time
of the common PIE language. For example, the famous Satem innovations all
are limited to the IE languages in the east of the IE settlement area,
with the exception of the (western-type) Centum language Tocharian, which
actually is the easternmost IE language, in China (Xinjiang; to which add
the Bangani substrate). Clearly, the older Centum block has been split
by the Satem innovations (not withstanding that the speakers of Tocharians
might have moved further east after the split). Such clustering indicates
that Indo-Iranian is a southeastern extension of eastern (Satem) IE and
that Vedic is the easternmost one of these. For a recent summary, see H.H.
Hock (1986: 452, 1999). From this, as well as from a number of earlier
studies, it is obvious that the 'dialectal features' in the arrangements
of (P)IE languages indicate a general expansion of IE westwards and eastwards
from an unknown center, somewhere close to the geographical center of the
pre-colonial expansion of IE languages over Siberia, the Americas, etc.
The actual spread of IE across Eurasia points in the same direction.
It has been well observed in various parts of the world that a settlement
close to each other of related languages indicates their original habitat
while a (geographically) wide spread of one of a (sub)family points to
recent expansion. One can observe this with Bantu which covers all of Central,
East and South Africa while its parent group, Niger-Congo, has a very dense
arrangement of diverse languages in West Africa.[N.105] Or, even more recently,
the large array of English dialects in England, and the very few but large
variants outside England (N. America, Australia, etc.) clearly point to
England as the place of origin.
In the case of IE, the application of this principle would indicate
an original settlement of the ancestor language somewhere in (S)E. Europe;
it must not be overlooked, however, that many early IE languages have disappeared
since (Thracian, Dacian in the Balkans, Hittite, Luwian, etc. in
Anatolia, and probably some languages in S. Russia/Ukraine as well, areas
that were subsequently settled by Scythians and other (Turkic) steppe peoples,
and finally by Slavs. The center may therefore have been situated somewhere
between Greek, Hittite, Armenian in the South and Slavic, Iranian (Scythian,
Saka, etc.) in the north, in other words, in the Greater Ukraine.
This area is also at the fault line between the western Centum and eastern
Satem languages and of certain syntactic features of IE (Hock 1999:
15).
All such observations make an Indian homeland of PIE a priori
unlikely. Hock (1999) has adduced further reasons why this cannot be the
case: all dialectal differences in PIE would have been exported, at various
periods, and would exactly have reconstituted themselves geographically,
all over Europe and the Near East, in the same geographical relationship
as originally found in the hypothetical Indian homeland. This certainly
needs very special pleading, and simply falls prey to Occam's razor.[N.106]

§ 12.10 Other 'Out of India' theories: Sprachbund

Another new and equally misleading linguistic scenario has
recently been created by writers such as Aiyar (1975), Waradpande (1993)
and scientists such as S. Kak (1994a), or always on the internet,
S. Kalyanaraman (1999). They contend that two of the major language families
of South Asia, Indo-Aryan (i.e. IE) and Dravidian are not (very) different
from each other. Both would rather represent two forms of an old
South Asian Proto-language, which they call, variously, a prAkRt or just
the Indian 'Bronze Age language'.
Again, the idea is not exactly new. A fore-runner is, quite unexpectedly
and already at the beginning of the past century, Aurobindo[N.107] (cf.
Talageri 2000). With the then usual conflation of outward appearance or
'race', ethnicity, and language (note: Hirt 1907), he found that his native
people, the Bengalis, and the inhabitants of his new home, Ponchicherry
(where he went into exile, evading the British), were not so different
after all.
More recently, some Indian scholars have expressed the (ultimately
correct) feeling of an All-Indian cultural unity in terms of language as
well (Aurobindo, etc., cf. Bryant 1999). Swaminatha Aiyar's analyses
(1975, quoted, with approval by Misra 1992: 73-78, and adopted) of common
features between Aryan and Dravidian are a case in point:
"...from a linguistic point of view also, Dravidian is more comparable
to Indo-Aryan than to any other language family in the world... But
Dravidian may be the first to have been separated and went north. Next
the centum people separated and left through the Himalayan passes to Caspian
or Pamir and then to Europe etc. The satem speakers left after that, batch
by batch. The last batch might have been the Iranians."
The first part of the quote confuses descent (genetic relationship)
of languages with secondary mutual influences of neighboring languages
(S. Asian linguistic region, Sprachbund).
The very idea of a "pan-Indian prAkRt" is, of course, a
contradictio in se. As any beginner in linguistics should know, prAkRt
always refers to an Indo-Aryan language, Middle Indo-Aryan to be
precise. The designation 'common South Asian Proto-language' or, worse,
"prAkRt", when used for Archaic Tamil, is imaginary and confusing, just
as a Dravidian Proto-Vedic, P-Hindi, or a Mundic P-Bengali would be.
The issue at hand is whether there ever was such a thing as a
common S. Asian or Indian "Prakrit". Kalyanaraman, Kak (1994a), or Misra
(1992) simply (or handily) confuse the relatively new concept of a South
Asian linguistic area (Sprachbund) with the 'genetic' relationship of the
languages involved.
This idea was developed early in the 20th century when linguists
where surprised that several disparate languages in the Balkans shared
so many features. These include Rumanian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, Serbian,
Greek and Albanian. Now, these are all Indo-European languages and thus
have the same starting point, though Bulgarian has an old Turkish
(Bulgar, different from modern Turkish) and an IE Thracian substrate. But
they come from four quite different sub-families: Rumanian from the
Western IE Vulgar Latin, Bulgarian, Macedonian and Serbian from the Eastern
IE Southern Slavic, Greek from the Western IE Old Greek, and finally Albanian
from the vague Illyrian/Dalmatian (etc.) subfamily. As such, they are much
more different from each other than even modern Iranian and Indo-Aryan.
However, they have stayed together for a long time, and have
had intermingled settlements (Albanian near Athens, Rumanian-type Romance
speech in Bulgaria, etc.) for 1500-2000 years. Consequently, bilingual
speakers have influenced each other considerably, especially in syntax
and by mutual loan words. Yet, there still is no "new Balkan language"
or a "Balkan language family" in sight. The basic vocabulary of these 6
languages still is very different and most of their grammatical formantia
as well.
The same applies to S. Asia, where the idea of a linguistic area
was pioneered by Emeneau (1956), Kuiper (1967). But here, the starting
point is unlike that of the Balkans: S. Asia has at least 3 different
large language families:[N.108] IE, Drav., Munda, which have nothing in
common, neither in basic vocabulary nor in word structure nor in grammatical
formantia. The situation is not unlike that in modern Europe, with Uralic
(Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, etc.), Basque, Altaic (mod. Turkish), and
the rest (= IE). For details on the South Asian
Sprachbund or linguistic area or convergence area, it is useful to
consult Hock (1986: 491-512) though it is largely devoted to syntax. It
is clear that, over the past few millennia, the three language families
of S. Asia have converged to a large degree, including phonetics (retroflexes,
see §15), word formation (Munda changed from a monosyllabic language
with prefixes into a polysyllabic one working with suffixes) and syntax
(spread of absolutives, see Tikkanen 1987, or sentence structure preferring
SOV arrangements, see Hock 1986).
The spread of such convergent items has been taken by some (Kak
1994) as a sign that the various S. Asian languages are underway
to form a new language family. This is overstating the matter by not just
a little margin. It has not happened in the Balkans. Or, English, with
its large share of Romance (French) vocabulary and some grammatical features
(calques such as more beautiful : plus beaux), has not joined the circle
of Romance languages, nor have French and Anglo-Saxon, or the other converging
(Western) European languages coalesced into a new "(Western) European"
family.
As has been mentioned above, the proponents of a 'common' South
Asian Proto-language / 'prAkRt' and a "new S. Asian language family in
statu nascendi" confuse the outcome of a long stay together and
original "genetic descent". Tamil speakers do not use Hindi words in their
basic vocabulary, nor do Bengali speakers use Santali words, nor Kashmiri
speakers Burushaski words, nor Nepali speakers Tibetan words, and vice
versa. And, the various grammars involved still are far apart from each
other, in spite of all the converge features evoked above. To state things
differently simply is bad linguistics and special pleading, as already
seen several times in the case of the Out-of-India theorists.

§ 12.11. Emigration and linguistic features

In order to approach and evaluate place and time of the hypothetical
(OIT) Indo-European home in South Asia (or that of the even less likely
common S. Asian Proto-language) and of the hypothetical emigration of the
Iranian and other IE speakers from India, one has to look for terms that
are old in PIE. For example, PIE *gwou- 'cow', *dyeu- 'heaven', and their
archaic acc. forms *gwOm, *dyEm, with PIE dissimilation of -w-, should
have existed already in a hypothetical IE Panjab. However, these PIE forms
are reflected in the various old IE languages (with their subsequent individual
phonetic innovations): Ved. gAm 'cow', Hom. Grk. boun/bOn,Ved. dyAm 'heaven',
Grk. zEn; etc. (EWA I 479, 752). In any autochthonous theory, this archaic
dissimilation would either be due to pre-split PIE dialects inside India
(refuted by Hock 1999, above) or to a subsequent individual development
of the same traits outside India, after the IE languages would have left
the subcontinent. Such an a priori unlikely scenario, however, is
rendered altogether impossible as the subsequent eastern (Satem) developments
(gw- > g in 'cow') are restricted to a dialect continuum of eastern IE
(where a dissimilation *gOum > *gOm was no longer possible). Other such
unique Satem and IIr cases involve *kw > k, *k' > c', then,
*ke > *cae > ca; the change *e > *ae is early in IIr. as it is seen
in the cakAra, jagAma type palatalization, as well as that of *o
> A in Brugmann cases (cf. Hock 1999); finally IIr. *ae > Ved./Avest. a.
Clearly, several long term developments are involved. Just like the supposed
(OIT) individual innovations in dyAm and gAm, such eastern IE developments
(Hock 1986: 451 sq.) would have to be re-imports from their focus
in E. Europe/Central Asia into India, -- all convoluted cases of very special
pleading.
The first traces of IE languages are attested with Hittite around
2000/1600 BCE in Anatolia, Mycenean Greek at c. 1400/1200 in Crete, Mitanni-IA.
in N. Iraq at 1380 BCE. All PIE and IIr terms and forms must precede
this date by a large margin as even archaic languages such as Vedic and
Hittite are separated from each other by many innovative developments.
The date of the dispersal of the earliest, W. IE languages (including Tocharian,
eastwards) must be early in the 3rd mill. BCE or still earlier.
But, in the autochthonous scenario of an emigration out of India,
the Centum languages (Celtic, Germanic, Latin, Greek, etc.), then the Satem
languages (Slavic, etc.), would have followed each other by a time span
of at least a few hundred years, and Iranian would have been the last to
emigrate from India as it is closest to Vedic; it should have left well
before c. 1000 BCE, when W. Iranian is first found on the eastern borders
of Mesopotamia.[N.109]
These dates allow to set the claims of the autochthonous school
(Talageri 1993, 2000) into a distinct relief, especially when such early
dates as 5000 BCE (based on a loan word link with Finno-Ugrian) are claimed
for the RV (S.S. Misra 1992). While this is impossible on text-internal,
cultural grounds, their hypothetical old RV would have the comparatively
modern form of Old Indo-Aryan that would, nevertheless, precede that
of the very archaic Hittite by a margin of some 3000 years. We know, of
course, that Vedic is not earlier than Hittite but clearly later, i.e.
lower in the cladistic scheme that is popularly called the 'family tree':
it is later than Eastern IE (Satem innovations, RUKI, cf. Hock 1986, 1999),
later than Proto-Indo-Iranian (e, a > ´, k' > c', o > A in open syllables,
with o > a in all other syllables), and even later than Pre-Vedic (c' >
z, or zd(h) and j' > Ved. h, which still preserved as s' [z'
] < j'h in Mitanni IA at 1400 BCE, see below §18). In short, all
of the above indicates that neither time nor space would agree with a OIT
scenario.
Another major obstacle against the emigration theory is that
even the closest relative of Vedic, the hypothetical emigrant Old Iranian
language, misses all Indo-Aryan innovations (see below §13-17). Any
argument militating against this must use the special pleading that all
Vedic innovations happened only after the emigration of the Iranians out
of India; this is, however, impossible in cases such as rAT/rAj-,
SoDaza, voDhar-, sede and others such as the absolutive.
In other words, Misra's scheme (and that of all others who assume
such early dates for the RV and an IE emigration out of India, such as
Talageri 1993, 2000, Elst 1999) are not only badly deliberated but are
plainly impossible: PIE, while still in the Panjab, would not yet have
developed all the traits found in non-OIA languages (Satem etc.), while
their close neighbor, the 'old' RV, would already have gone through all
Satem, IIr, Pre-Vedic and RV innovations 7000 years ago, -- an unlikely
scenario, to say the least. And, as such,[N.110] Rgvedic OIA would have
exercised early influences on the rather distant Uralic languages in S.
Russia/Urals/W. Siberia, while the non-IA neighbors of Uralic (Iranian,
Baltic, etc.) would not. All of this is obviously impossible on grounds
of space and time. Misra et al. have not thought through their idiosyncratic
and ad hoc scenarios.[N.111] To do so is not our job, but that of the proponent(s)
of the new theory. They should have done their homework.

§12.12. Emigration and culture

The matter can still further be elucidated by observing some cultural
features: according to the autochthonous theories the various IE
peoples ("Anu, Druhyu" of Talageri 1993, 2000) and their languages
hypothetically left India (around 5000/4000 BCE). If put to a test by archaeology
and linguistics, these 'emigrations' would rather have to be set
at the following latest possible dates.[N.112]
3000/2500 W.IE leave while possessing:
ayas 'copper/bronze' > Lat. aes
'copper, bronze', etc.;
but:
no chariot yet: Lat. rota 'wheel',
Grk. kuklo- 'wheel', Toch. kukael,
kokale 'wagon', etc.; note
Grk.
new formation ha'rma(t)- 'chariot'
(Pokorny 1959: 58);
yet, all parts of the heavy,
solid
wheel wagon are IE: akSa, ara
nAbha 'nave'; Germ. Rad/Lat. rota,
drawn by oxen (ukSan); --
domesticated horse *h1ek'wo >
Lat. equus, O.Ir. ech, Toch. yuk,
yakwe, used for riding

c. 1000 W. Iranians are attested on the
eastern
borders of Mesopotamia

According to this list, again, all Vedic linguistic innovations (with
the RV set at 5000/4000 BCE), and some E. Indo-European ones such as the
IIr. chariot, would have happened before the supposed emigration of the
Iranians from India! This is archaeologically impossible, unless one uses
the auxiliary, equally unlikely hypothesis that some IIr.s left India before
2000 BCE and reimported the chariot into India (Elst 1999). All such arguments
need very special pleading. Occam's Razor applies.

§ 12.13. Emigration & nature

While, theoretically again, a scenario of IE emigration from the
Panjab is possible, this claim, too, contradicts all we know about
IE material culture (e.g., horse, wagon, and the late chariot) and climate-based
vocabulary (willow, birch, fir, oak, snow, wolf, beaver, salmon, etc.),
all of which traditionally have been used to indicate a temperate IE
homeland with cold winters, somewhere in E. Europe-C. Asia, (Geiger 1871:
133 sqq., Schrader 1890: 271, Hirt 1907: 622, Friedrich 1970, Mallory 1989:
114 sqq.), -- that is, an area that included at least some (riverine?)
tree cover.
Even if we take into account that the Panjab has cool winters
with some frost and that the adjoining Afghani and Himalayan mountains
have a long winter season, the IE evidence does not bear out a South Asian
or Indian homeland. The only true IE tree found in S. Asia is the birch
(bhUrja),[N.113] and some argument can be made for the willow ("willow"
> Ved. vetasa 'cane, reed', see n.146), maybe the fir (pItu),[N.114]
and the aspen (varaNa?).[N.115] But why are all the other IE trees those
of a colder climate non-existent in Indian texts, even when even the neighboring
Iranians have some of them, e.g. in the eastern Afghani mountains (fir,[N.116]
oak,[N.117] willow,[N.118] poplar[N.119] )?
Or rather, to follow the autochthonous line: how did the IE tree
names belonging to a cooler climate ever get out of India where these trees
do not exist? One would have to use the auxiliary assumption that such
trees were only found in the colder climate of the Himalayas and Pamirs,
thus were part of the local South Asian vocabulary, and that they would
then have been taken along, in the westward movement of the emigrants.
But, even this special pleading does not work: some of these
temperate IE trees are not found in the S. Asian mountains. But, they still
have good Iranian and IE names, all with proper IE word formation (see
above). Interestingly, these words have not always been formed from the
same stem, which reflects normal (P)IE linguistic variation and is not
due to completely new, individual, local formation in one or the
other IE language. Rather, the PIE variations in the name of the beech,[N.120]
fir (and resin), and oak (see above) use the same roots and several of
the available PIE suffixes. In other words, these cool climate, temperate
trees and their names are already PIE.
If the indigenous theory of an emigration out of India would
apply, these tree names should have taken one or two typical "Indian"
PIE (dialect) forms and spread westwards, such as is the case with the
two loans from Chinese, chai or tea. The opposite is the case. The individual
IE languages have the same PIE word, or they have slightly innovated within
the usual PIE parameters of ablaut and suffixes.
In short, whatever way one turns the evidence, all of the above
points to some original IE tree names of the temperate zone exported southwards.
Some of them therefore exhibit a change in meaning; others are an application
of an old, temperate zone name to newly encountered plants, such as 'willow'
> 'reed, cane'. Again, this change in meaning indicates the path
of the migration, from the temperate zone into India.
If we carry out the countercheck, and search for Indian plant
names in the west, such as lotus, bamboo, Indian trees (azvattha, bilva,
jambu, etc.), we come up with nothing. Such names are not to be found,
also not in a new meaning, such as in a hypothetical case: *'fig tree'
> *'large tree with hanging twigs', *'willow'.[N.121] The lack is significant
as the opposite case, import into S. Asia, is indeed found. Again,
this points to an introduction of the IA language into India, not an export
'Out of India'.

The same kind of scenario is found with the typical
PIE animals that belong to a temperate climate. While some of them
such as the wolf or bear occur in South Asia as well, albeit in slightly
different species (such as the S. Asian black bear), others are found,
just as some of the tree names, only in new, adapted meanings. For example,
the beaver is not found inside S. Asia. It occurs, however, even now in
Central Asia, its bones have been found in areas as far south as N. Syria
and in mummified form in Egypt, and it is attested in the Avesta
(bawri < *babhri < IE *bhebhr-) when speaking of the dress ('made
up of 30 beaver skins') of the Iranian counterpart of the river Goddess
sarasvatI, ar@duuI sUrA anAhitA: Yt 5.129 "the female beaver
is most beautiful, as it is most furry: the beaver is a water animal" (yat~
asti bawris' sraEs'ta yatha yat~ asti gaonO.t@ma, bawris' bauuaiti upApO).[N.122]
Avestan bawri- is related to the descriptive term, IE *bhebhru "brown,
beaver" which is widely attested: O.Engl. bebr, beofor, Lat. fiber,
Lith. be~brus, Russ. bobr, bebr- (Pokorny 1959: 136). The respective word
in Vedic, babhru(-ka), however, means 'brown, mongoose' (Nenninger 1993).
While the mongoose is not a water animal, some Indian types of mongooses
vaguely look like a beaver, and clearly, the IE/IIr term for 'beaver' has
been used, inside South Asia, to designate the newly encountered animal,
the mongoose. This occurs today in the subcontinent, but in Greater Iran
only in its southeastern-most corner, in Baluchistan. Interestingly, N.Pers.
bebr < Phl. bawrak, Avest. bawri 'beaver' is a cat-like, tail-less
animal whose skins are used (Horn 1893: 42); the beaver, though previously
attested as far south as Syria and Egypt, is no(t longer) found in
Iran; note also N.Pers. bibar 'mouse'.
The opposite direction of the spread of the word, 'out
of India', is not likely as it is not Ved. babhru (or Avest. baËri)
that spread westwards (following S.S. Misra 1992) but their original (and
traditional) IE source, *bhebhru. Such a hypothetical export would
again have to suppose subsequent individual sound changes that mysteriously
result in the various attested IE forms that cannot occur if one starts
from Ved. babhru. It is unlikely, thus, that the original word, *bhebhru
signified the mongoose.[N.123] Other S. Asian animal names are not 'exported'
either. Occam's razor applies: all things being equal, it is easier to
assume import into S.Asia, along with the other animal names of the temperate
zone.
The case of the salmon may be added and briefly discussed in
this context. It has often been used to define the original homeland of
the Indo-Europeans, into the Fifties of the 20th century, by taking the
present distribution of the salmon for granted (rivers flowing into the
Baltic, Polar Sea, Thieme 1951).[N.124] However, another type of salmon
is also found in the rivers flowing into the Caspian Sea. The word in question
is attested in Osset. laesaeg 'salmon' (Salmo trutta caspius, perhaps a
kind of trout), Russian lososu, Lith. las'is'a, la~s'is, Germ. Lachs, Toch.
B. laks 'fish', Iran. *raxs'a 'dark colored' > N.Pers. raxs' 'red-white',
Ved. lAkSA 'lacquer, red resin'. Again, the direction from 'salmon'
> 'fish', > 'red-colored/lacquer' is more likely than the opposite
one, (especially when we also include Thieme's suggestion that Ved. lakSa
'wager' (in the dicing game using 150 nuts) is derived from 'salmon swarm',
note also Class. Skt. lakSa '100,000', see (EWA II 472, 477, EWA III, 83,
96-97, Pokorny 1959: 653).

All such evidence is not favorable for an emigration scenario.
Rather, Occam's razor applies, again: PIE has a number of temperate/cold
climate plants and animals which never existed in South Asia but which
can be reconstructed for all/most of PIE; their names follow IE rules of
word formation (root structure, suffixes etc.) and exhibit the typical
formational possibilities of IE (ablaut, exchange of various suffixes).
A few of them that designate flora and fauna actually occurring inside
S. Asia have been retained in Vedic (wolf, birch, etc.), others have gained
new meanings suitable for the animals or plants of a tropical climate
('willow' > 'reed', 'beaver' > 'mongoose').
Interestingly, the autochthonous counter-argument[N.125] relating
to tropical plants and animals does not work either. If we suppose a South
Asian homeland of PIE, we should be able to indicate at least a few
terms that have been exported (north)westwards. This is not the case. Designations
for typical Indian plants and animals that should be found in Indo-European
and especially in Iranian, do not even appear in Iran, not to speak of
C. Asia or Europe. Words such as those for animals, plants, and trees just
do not make it westwards.[N.126] Nor do we find retained names for newly
encountered plants/animals, although at least some of them are actually
still found in Iran: the lion (see Old Pers. sculptures at Behistun, Iran.
s'er (Horn 1893: 178); the tiger, Iran. bebr (Horn 1983: 42) that is still
found in the Elburz and Kopeh Dagh and as late as the Seventies around
the Aral Lake; the lotus (again seen on Behistun sculptures), etc. Other
words that have occasionally been used for the autochthonous argument,
such as kapi 'monkey', siMha 'lion' or ibha 'elephant' are rather dubious
cases.[N.127]
Ved. ibha (RV) does not even seem to indicate 'elephant' but
'household of a chief' (details in EWA I 194); i-bha 'elephant' is attested
only in Epic/Class. Skt. (EWA III 28), and the combination with Grk. ele'-pha(nt-),
Lat. ebur, Gothic ulbandus 'camel' suffers from lack of proper sound correspondences.
The word for monkey, Ved. kapi, is represented in Europe by another form
which is not directly related by regular sound correspondences either:
Grk. ke~bos, ke~pos, (cf. also Hebr. qOf, Akkad. uqUpu, iqUpu, aqUpu, Coptic
sapi, O. Egypt. gfj) :: Germanic *apan-, aban > Engl. ape with
an unexplained loss of initial k-. The change in initial consonant is typical
for transmissions of loan words from an unknown source, and cannot be used
as proof of an original PIE word *kAp/kap.[N.128] Similar relationships
are seen in the word for 'apple': Celt. *abal-, O.Ir. ubul, Crimean Gothic
apel, OHG apful, O.Norse apal-dr, Lith. o'buolas, etc., O.Ch.Slav. abluko,
including Basque, Caucasus and Bur. relations (Berger 1959).

Finally, it must be considered that, generally, the IE plants
and animals are those of the temperate climate and include the otter, beaver,
wolf, bear, lynx, elk, red deer, hare, hedgehog, mouse; birch, willow,
elm, ash, oak, (by and large, also the beech[N.129]); juniper, poplar,
apple, maple, alder, hazel, nut, linden, hornbeam, and cherry (Mallory
1989: 114-116). Some of them are found in South Asia, and their designations
have been used for the local form of the animal or plant (such bear RkSa,
wolf vRka, otter udra, birch bhUrja, etc.) But most of them are not found
in India and their designations have either been adapted (as is the
case with the beaver > mongoose babhru), or they have simply not
been used any longer.
According to the autochthonous theory, these non-Indian plant
and animal names would have to be new words that were coined only when
the various IE tribes had already emigrated out of India. However, all
of them are proper IE names, with IE roots and suffixes and with proper
IE word formation. It would require extra-ordinary special pleading to
assume that they all were created independently by the emigrant IE tribes,
at different times, on different paths, but always from the same IE roots
and (often) with the same suffixes: how could these 'emigrants' know or
remember exactly which roots/suffixes to choose on encountering a new plant
or animal? Rather, as usual by now with all such arguments, Occam's razor
applies, and the opposite assumption carries: IE words of the flora and
fauna of the temperate zone were adapted to a tropical climate wherever
possible. We see immigration into, instead of emigration 'out of India'.

In the sequel, some of the individual linguistic proposals of
the 'Out of India' theory, and the and sometimes rather technical arguments
that speak for and against it will be discussed.

§13. Absence of Indian influences in Indo-Iranian

When compared to Eastern IE or to the rest of IE, Avestan and
Old Persian share many innovations with Vedic, which was the initial reason
to set up this group of languages as a separate branch of IE, IIr.
Just as in biology (taxonomy, the human pedigree, genetics, etc.) or in
manuscript study (setting up of a stemma), the occurrence of common innovations
always indicates that the innovative group has split off from the core
group, and obviously is to be dated later than the core.
For example, Vedic ah-am ''I''= Avestan az-@m, az-*m O.Pers.
ad-am have added the additional morpheme IIr. -am (as in ay-am, iy-am);
it was transferred to the rest of the pronouns: tvam, vayam, yUyam as well.
This feature is not found in other IE languages: Lat., Greek egO, Gothic
ik (Engl. I), O.Slavic azu, jazu; it clearly separates IIr. from the other
E. and W. IE languages.
While Iranian, at first sight, seems to be more innovative than
OIA in its phonology (s > h, kh > x; p, t, k + consonant >
f, th, x + cons., etc.), it frequently is also more archaic than
Vedic. It lacks the many innovations that characterize Vedic, for example
the absolutives in -tvA, -ya, ntr. pl. in -Ani, the perf. jaga-u,
or the normalization in g- of the present stems beginning in j/g-: IE gwm-sk'e-ti
> IIr. *ja-s'ca-ti > Avest. jasaiti :: Vedic gacchati. (Note
that j is retained only in traditional names such as jamad-agni and
in the perfect, ja-gAm-a, etc.) Importantly, Iranian it misses the
generalization of the already Rgvedic e-perfects, derived from IIr.
*sazdai (Avest. hazde) > Vedic sede with many analogical formations such
as mene. Since sound changes are not random and develop in linear fashion,
these innovations must have occurred well after Vedic had separated from
late IIr./pre-Iranian, thus : IE --> E. IE -> IIr --> Vedic, or Iranian.
The advocates of the autochthonous theory, however, would
have the Vedic innovations occur in the Panjab only after the Iranian speakers
had left the subcontinent, while retaining some very archaic features.
(Talageri 2000, against all linguistic evidence, even denies close relationship
of both groups). Some other innovations found both in India and Iran would
have occurred earlier than that while both groups still lived in the Panjab;
still others (found in E. IE, such as in Slavic) would have occurred at
a still earlier, third level, again in the Panjab, while languages of the
fourth level (including Greek, Latin, Germanic, etc.) would have left the
subcontinent even before this.
While all of this is possible in a purely theoretical scenario,
there are a number of arguments that render it impossible. Some of them
have been listed by Hock (1999, see above). Others include such items as
the temperate, non-tropical core vocabulary of IE, early IE loans from
Semitic somewhere in the Near East (**wVjn-, IE *woin- 'wine', cf. J. Nichols
1997: 143), or on a more typological level, the intermediate position of
IE between the Uralic and Kartvelian (W. Caucasian) language families (Nichols
1997, 1998). As far as the Satem language IIr is concerned, one can add
the early close links of IIr (and, later, early Iranian) with Uralic in
S. Russia and in the Ural and W. Siberian regions, and the new terminology
coined for the horse-drawn chariot (ratha/ratha), first introduced in the
S. Russia/Ural area. This list, which could be extended, clearly points
to the areas north of the Near East, and strongly militates against
the assumption of an Indian homeland of OIA, IIr, and, worse, of IE (see
below).
How can the autochthonous theory then deal with archaisms found
in Iranian that are not found in Vedic? Such archaisms ought to have been
preserved in Vedic; they must have been forgotten (just like the tree names
mentioned above) all over the subcontinent when the Iranians supposedly
left it. Such collective amnesia, and in addition, one restricted just
to certain archaic items does not make for a good case. It is, again, one
of very special pleading.
It should also be mentioned in passing, that if the Iranians
emigrated from India, why we do not find ''Indian bones'' or genes of this
massive emigration in Iran and beyond? Indian skeletons are, as Kennedy
informs us (1995), remarkably different from Near Eastern ones.[N.130]
Again, indigenists would have to argue that only that section of the Panjab
population left westwards which had basically 'non-Indian' physical characteristics,
very special pleading indeed. To adopt an OIT stance precisely mirroring
the Indo-Aryan immigration theory based on 'trickling in' is not possible
as this 'trickling out' would comprise all subfamilies of IE, from Tocharian
to Celtic, and would constitute a much more massive emigration.
The IE theory can explain the materials found in the various
languages much more satisfactorily: the Iranian languages simply miss the
Indianization of IE, just as the very conservative Old Icelandic or Lithuanian
escaped the 'Christianization' and 'Europeanization' for a long time.

§14. Date of Indo-Aryan innovations

As has been mentioned, the linguistic innovations of Vedic Sanskrit
are supposed by autochthonists to have taken place only after the Iranians
(and other Indo-Europeans) had left the subcontinent (Elst 1999: 122,124
sqq). It is difficult to argue against this kind of assumption on
general linguistic grounds as language changes cannot easily be tied to
certain areas, unless there is evidence from inscriptions and clearly localizable
texts. However, the distribution of IE dialect features mentioned above
(Hock 1999) makes IE innovations after an Iranian/IE exodus from India
unlikely;[N.131] for, even though the old Satem innovations include Vedic,
they exclude Latin, Greek, Tocharian, etc.
Further, a good indicator is found in IE plant and animal names
(''willow'', etc.) and especially in the word for the horse drawn chariot,
Sanskrit ratha, O.Iran. ratha. This word is attested in the oldest
IIr texts, in the RV and in the Avesta, also with the secondary formation
Ved. rathin-, O.Av. rathI 'the one who has a chariot, charioteer'. Even
more tellingly, it appears in the inherited, archaic compound, with a locative
case ending in its first member, RV rathe-STha, Avest. rathaE-s'ta- 'charioteer'
(cf. also savyeSTha 'warrior').
As the autochthonous theory would have the RV at c. 5000 or,
according to some, before the start of the Indus civilization at 2600 BCE,
the Iranians or other Indo-Europeans should have exported the chariot from
S. Asia at that time. But the chariot is first found in a rather archaic
form ('proto-chariot'), betraying its origin in a ox-drawn wagon (anas,
*weg'h-o- > wagon, veh-icle), at c. 2000 BCE, in Russia and at Sintashta,
W. and E. of the Urals. As its invention is comparatively late, the
western IE languages retain, not surprisingly, the older meaning of the
IE word, *roth2o-''wheel'' (Lat. rota, Germ. Rad 'wheel'); they simply
have moved away, before this development took place, from the original
central IE region (such as the Ukraine) westwards into Europe.[N.132]
The indigenist counter-argument could maintain that the newly
introduced chariot spread quickly from the Near East or Central Asia all
over the Iranian and Indian world, with its IIr name, *ratha. It would
thus belong only to a secondary historical level (after that of the earlier
"Panjab Indo-Europeans"). This argument, however, would run into a number
of difficulties: for, strangely, the word in its new meaning of 'chariot'
never reached the neighboring Proto-Slavic tribes, nor the other
European 'emigrants' (Grk. has ha'rma/harmatos, Latin currus, curriculum,
rota) on the western side of Eurasia while it is known to the close neighbors,
the (Northern) Iranians. Worse, the word and the object are found already
in the RV (supposedly a text of pre-Indus age, 2600 or c. 5000 BCE!), well
before its invention.[N.133] In short, multiple insurmountable contradictions
emerge.
The word cakra 'wheel' may be a much older adaptation from Sumerian
gil-gul 'wheel' and GIS'gi'gir 'wagon,' to IE *kwe-kwl-o- > IIr. cakra
(or, it is derived from a common origin, Littauer and Crouwel 1996). However,
the newly specialized meaning ratha ''chariot'' is restricted to IIr.;
its archaeological attestation puts PIIr, again, close to the Urals. --
On the other hand, there are common PIE words for the cart or four-wheeled
wagon (anas) and its constituent parts, such as and akSa 'axle', ara 'spoke,
pin', nabhya 'nave', yuga 'yoke', razmi, razanA 'reins', etc.; for details
see EWA, s.v. They are much older, PIE, as they refer to the
more primitive technology of solid wheel wagons and carts that was developed
in Mesopotamian in the late 4th millennium.
In sum, if according to the autochthonous theory, the Iranians
had emigrated westwards well before the RV (2600/5000 BCE), how could both
the Indians (in the Panjab) and Iranians (from the Ukraine to Xinjiang)
have a common word for the horse drawn chariot as well as a rather ancient
word for the charioteer? Both words must have been present at the time
of the Indo-Iranian parent language. As the linguistic evidence shows,
the technical innovation was already Indo-Iranian (note Proto-IIr. dental
*th that regularly developed to > Ir. interdental th, as in OIran. ratha),
and it must have happened at the place of its invention, in the plains
near the IIr. River rasA (Volga), certainly not in the Panjab.
Consequently, the occurrence of ratha/ratha in IIr. at c. 2000
BCE shows that its import was carried out, along with many other IIr. items
of culture and religion, from the S. Russian/Central Asian steppes into
the subcontinent, and not vice versa. This is one of the few clear cases
where we can align linguistic innovation with innovation in material culture,
poetics and myth, and even with archaeological and historical[N.134] attestation.
Therefore, we have to take it very seriously. Anyone of the various revisionist
or autochthonous dating schemes that circumvent this innovation in technology
and language dealing with the horse drawn, spoke-wheeled chariot at c.
2000 BCE is doomed to failure.
Other (theoretically) possible scenarios such as an import, along
with that of the horse (see below), from some (N.) Iranians near the Urals
into the area of the Indo-Aryans who had supposedly remained stationary
in the Panjab, run counter to the archaic formation of the words concerned
(ratheSTha, savyeSTha) and the clearly secondary, inherited form in Iranian
(ratha-), and would amount, again, to very special pleading.

Likewise, the many linguistic archaisms in Old Iranian cannot
readily be explained by a supposed Iranian emigration from India.
The Old Avestan of zarathus'tra frequently is more archaic than the RV
and therefore too archaic to have moved out of India after the composition
of the RV (supposedly, before 2600/5000 BCE). For example, the Avestan
combination within a sentence of neuter plural nouns with the
singular of the verb is hardly retained even in the other older IE languages.
Conversely, something not found in Iranian, i.e. the Rgvedic perfect
forms jabhAra or mene, are a local IA innovation. All of this points to
separation of Proto-Iran. and Proto-OIA at some time before the RV. Also,
it cannot have happened inside S. Asia as the Avesta lacks all those typically
S. Asian words that are local loans into Vedic (§16; Witzel 1999a,b).
Incidentally, the lack of S. Asian substrate words in Iranian (cf. Bryant
1999) also explains why the archaic Iranian traits cannot have been preserved
in the Panjab, side by side with the RV, before the supposed Iranian move
westwards.[N.135]
One can only conclude that Proto-Iranian (> Avestan, O.Persian)
split off from IIr and thus, from pre-Old IA. (> Vedic, Mitanni IA, etc.)
at an early date, and definitely so while spoken outside the Panjab. Because
of the early split, Old Iranian preserved some archaic features, while
also developing innovations on its own (Iran. x < IIr kh, h < s,
etc.). In sum, Proto-Iranian never was spoken in the Panjab.
Or, to give another example, according to the autochthonous theory,
Proto-Ir. would have to had to leave the Panjab before the Vedic dialects
of the RV took over (or developed) the so-called retroflex (mUrdhanya)
consonants.

§15. Absence of retroflexes in Iranian

While the feature of retroflexion (T, Th, D, Dh, S, N) is
sporadically found also in some other parts of the world (Hock 1986), such
as in Scandinavia or Australia (innovative in both cases), it is typical
for S. Asia when compared to its neighboring regions, that is Iran, West/Central
Asia, the Himalayas, S.E. Asia.[N.136]
In the autochthonous scenarios discussed above, the hypothetical
emigrants from India would have lost the S. Asian ''bending back of their
tongues'' as soon as they crossed the Khyber or Bolan Passes:[N.137] not
even Old Iranian (East Iran. Avestan) has these sounds. But, conversely,
the Baluchi, who originally were a W. Iranian tribe, have acquired retroflexion
-- just in some of their dialects -- only after their arrival on the borders
on the subcontinent, early in the second millennium CE (Hoffmann 1941,
cf. Hock 1996, Hamp 1996). The same happened to other late, incoming groups
such as Parachi, Ormuri (from W. Iran) that are found in E. Afghanistan,
and also to some local Iranian Pamir languages such as Wakhi. Clearly,
retroflexion affects those moving into the E. Iranian borderland/Indus
plain. Importantly, the most widespread appearance of retroflexes
is among the cluster of Hindukush/Pamir languages, that is the languages
surrounding these mountains in the east (Nuristani/Kafiri, Burushaski,
Dardic and the rest of these northernmost IA languages) as well as in the
north (some of the Iranian Pamir languages: Wakhi, Yigdha, Sanglechi, Ishkashmi,
Khotanese Saka), as detailed by Tikkanen (in Parpola 1994: 166). Retroflexes
may also have belonged to a part of the Central Asian/ Afghanistan substrate
of the RV (Witzel 1999a,b). Retroflexion clearly is a northwestern regional
feature that still is strongest and most varied in this area.
Had retroflexion indeed been present in the pre-Iranian or the
Proto-Iranian coeval with the (Rg)Vedic period, its effects should be visible
in Old Iranian, at least in Avestan[N.138] which was spoken in East Iran,
that means in part on the territory of modern Pashto (which has retroflexes
indeed).
Cases such as IIr *waj'h-tar > Av. vas'tar, but >
Ved. voDhar- are clear enough and present perhaps the best testimony for
the several stages of conditioned reflexes in the development from IE to
Vedic: a change from Ved. voDhar- --> Avestan vas'tar-
is plainly impossible in any version of phonetics, as also voDhar- -->
IE *wek'h-tor- (as in Latin vec-tor): missing consonants as in vo-Dhar-
do not suddenly (re-)emerge out of the blue in other languages, and nota
bene: not as a phonetically changed -s'- in Iranian, as -k- in Latin, or
as -k- in Gaulish Vectur-ius, or as -g- as in Engl. wagon; rather, with
the IE theory, they all stem from < IE *weg'h-tor- (neglected
by Misra 1992).
The case of voDhar- is pre-conditioned by the development of
IE k', g' > IIr c', j', which changed to Proto-Iran. and Pre-Vedic
s', z', then to early Vedic retroflex .s.', .z'., which only then could
influence the following consonant (of the -tar suffix), as to deliver the
retroflex 'suffix' -Dhar-. At this stage, the same retrograde Sandhi
as seen in budh+ta > buddha took place (.z'h.-da > .z'.dha), and
only then, the voiced sibilant .z'. disappeared, normally (as in lih: li.z'.Dha
> lIDha) with compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel; but, in
the particular environment of voDhar (a.z'. > o, just as az > e)
represented by o + retroflex consonant (-tar suffix), in short:
IE *weg'h + ter > IIr * vaj'htar- > pre-Ved.
*va.z'.Dhar-[N.139] > Ved. voDhar-
> pre-Iran.
*vas'tar- > Avest. vas'tar-
In sum, the well-known rules of IE sound changes explain the development
from the root vah (IE *weg'h) without problem, while an OIT theory would
have great difficulty to get from voDhar- to any Avestan, Latin,
English, etc., forms.
Again, it is important to stress that retroflexes have not occurred
in (Old) Iranian, which has kept the older sound sequences. In addition,
these changes allow a relative and even an absolute dating: *az'dh
> oDh is parallel to *sazd- > sed, i.e. both are post-Indo-Iranian
and even post-Mitanni; as pointed out above, Mitanni OIA keeps the sequence
azd. In other words, Rgvedic is younger than the Mitanni words preserved
at c. 1450-1350 BCE. At any rate, RV -ed- is definitely younger than the
Mitanni forms because the IIr form *sazdai > Ved. sede (3 sg. perf.,
cf. Avestan hazde) 'he has sat' has already spawned a number of analogical
formations in the RV which are not conditioned by -azd-. These are found
even in the older sections of the RV: yam > yem: yemuH
4.2.14, pac > pec: pece 4.18.13 etc.[N.140]
In all the cases detailed above, the retroflex is a late, i.e.
a Vedic innovation that is not shared by Iranian and the other IE languages.
In short, the innovation is rather low down on the 'family pedigree', in
cladistics. Any biologist would classify a similar development in biological
materials as a clear indicator of a late development, as an innovation,
-- in case, one that separates IA from the rest of IIr and IE.
In other words, Vedic Sanskrit does not represent the oldest form of IE
as autochthonists often claim.

The adherents of the autochthonous theory would again have to
take recourse to special pleading, arguing that retroflexion occurred only
after the Iranians had supposedly left (i.e., well before the RV, at 4-5000
or 2600 BCE), or while they were living in some area of the Panjab untouched
by this phenomenon. This individual argument is, again, not a priori impossible.
But, it is not admissible on other grounds, such as the occurrence of local
loan words in Vedic. These have been taken from the Panjab substrate (Witzel
1999a,b) that has unconditioned retroflexes (such as in vANA, vINA, etc.),
and these substrate words are, again, missing in Iranian.[N.141]
Retroflexion in Vedic must have been a regional feature, acquired,
just as it was by the Pashtos and the more recently arrived the W. Iranian
Baluchis, at the time of immigration.
In sum, retroflexion affects all those moving into the E. Iranian
borderland, the Indus plain and the subcontinent. but this does not work
vice versa: those who move out of India, sooner or later, loose it.
However, if this would be taken as proof of OIT, it does not work at all:
this particular development does not help to explain words such as Ved.
voDhar- which cannot turn into Iran. vas'tar-, Latin vector, etc.[N.142]
The same conclusion can be reached when studying local Panjab loanwords
in the RV.

§16. Absence of 'Indian' words in Iranian

As has been underlined several times, the hypothetical emigrants
from the subcontinent would have taken with them a host of ''Indian'' words
-- as the Gypsies (Roma, Sinti) indeed have done. But, we do not find any
typical Old Indian words beyond S. Asia, neither in the closely related
in Old Iranian, nor in E. or W. IE, except for the usual words of culture
(Wanderwoerter) such as some recent imports into English (orange, tea/chai,
or curry, punch, veranda, bungalow), or the older ones of the type rice,
beryl, hemp, etc.[N.143] One would expect 'emigrant' Indian words such
as those for lion (siMha), tiger (vyAghra AV+, pRdAku AV+, zArdUla MS+,
puNDarIka lex.),[N.144] elephant (gaja Manu+ ibha RV?, kuJjara Mbh.+),
leopard (dvIpin AV+, Ep., citra-ka, etc. lex.), lotus (padma, kamala, puNDarIka),
bamboo (veNu), or some local Indian trees (azvattha, zamI, bilva, jambu),
even if some of them would have been preserved, not for the original item,
but for a similar one (e.g. English [red] squirrel > N. American [gray]
squirrel). Instead of Indian words we find, e.g., for siMha 'lion'
new formations : Iran. s'er, Grk. lIs, Lat. leO(n) (cf. Witzel 1999a,b),
and similarly, Gr./Latin ones for 'tiger', 'lotus'. Many of them
come from a Mediterranean/Near Eastern substrate, but not as expected in
any OIT scenario, from the S. Asian one visible in Vedic.
In sum, no typical Indian designation for plants or animals made
it beyond the Khyber/Bolan passes. The only clear exception would be the
birch tree, whose IE name *bhRg'ho- is found all the way from India[N.145]
to Europe: Ved. bhUrja KS+, Ir. Pamir dial. furz, Shugni vAwzn < *barznI;
Osset. boers(oe); Lith. be'rz'as, Serbo-Croat. bre`za; German Birke,
Engl. birch, etc. (cf. §12.6, n.113). The other 'European' trees that
are found in the northwest of the subcontinent, and beyond up to Russia/Urals,
are absent from Sanskrit vocabulary.[N.146]
This situation has been well explained by the assumption of IE
linguists that these European/Caucasus/Ural tree names were remembered
(sometimes, in the Central Asian steppes and deserts, only in old sayings
or in poetry?) down to the very doorsteps of South Asia in Afghanistan,
or were applied to similar items, but were utterly forgotten in the tropical
S. Asia as there were no similar trees to which these IE names could be
applied. One apparent exception, vetasa, can easily be explained by a
transfer of meaning, from the very pliable (Afghan) 'willow' twigs to the
equally pliable 'reed, cane' (see above).[N.147]
The autochthonous theory again must introduce the improbable
auxiliary assumption that all such words have been forgotten inside the
subcontinent after, or even as soon as, the Iranians (and other Indo-Europeans)
supposedly had crossed the Suleiman Range and the Khyber/Bolan passes into
Afghanistan and Iran.
However, many if not most S. Asian plant and animal names have
clear, non-IE local origins; in other words, they are loan words
from the local S. Asian languages[N.148] (e.g., RV mayUra 'peacock', vrIhi
'rice', etc.). Others are new formations, built on the basis of IE words,
e.g. 'elephant': hastin (+ mRga) RV 1.64.7, 4.16.13 etc., 'the (wild
animal) with the hand, the elephant', used for words such as Late Ved.
gaja, ZB 14.4.1.24 mataGga, Epic nAga, RV(?) ibha.[N.149] Or 'tiger', vyAghra
< 'who tears apart?' (KEWA III 274), 'who smells scents by opening [his
jaws]'(?) EWA II 593, for VS zArdUla, puNDarIka (lex.), (note also
N.Pers. bebr). These new formations must have been introduced when the
immigrating speakers of Indo-Aryan (again, not the Iranians!) were first
faced with them in the Greater Panjab. Indigenists (Talageri 2000,
Elst 1999, etc.) denounce such cases as just one more of the common substitutions
based on poetic or descriptive formations, or as dialect designations which
can happen at any stage in the history of a language (e.g. Vulgar Latin
caballus > French cheval, etc. for older equus). However, such critics
once again overlook the wider complex, the complete absence of original
IE/IA words for S. Asian plants/animals built with clear IE roots and/or
word structure. The absence of IE/IA words for local plants and animals
clearly militates against any assumption that Pre-IA, Proto-IIr or PIE
was the local language of the Panjab or of Uttar Pradesh during (pre-)Harappan
times.
This also agrees with the fact that most of the S. Asian loan
words in the Rgveda, excluding some Central Asian imports, are not found
in Iran and beyond.[N.150] These words include Kuiper's (1991) c. 380 'foreign
words' in the RV. Again, not all of them could have been lost as soon as
the hypothetical IE or Iranian emigrants crossed over into
Iran and beyond. One would at least expect a few of them in the 'emigrant'
languages. Such Indian words should have survived in the west and could
have acquired a new meaning, such as British Engl. corn 'wheat' >
'maize' in America. The Gypsies, after all, have kept a large IA vocabulary
alive, over the past 1500 years or so, during their wanderings all
over the Near East, North Africa and Europe (e.g., phral 'brother', pani
'water', kara'l 'he does').
No amount of special pleading will convince an independent (linguistic)
observer of a scenario that relies on the total loss of all typical S.
Asian words in Iranian and all the other 'emigrant' Indo-European languages.
Again, Occam's razor requires to scrap the theory of an 'Aryan' or, worse,
an Indo-European emigration from the Panjab to the West.

§17. IE words in Indo-Iranian; IE Archaisms vs.
Indian innovations

Conversely, and not unexpectedly by now, typical IIr. words indicating
a temperate climate, and with IE root and suffix structure, such as 'wolf'
(vRka: Avest. v@hrka; cf. Lith. vilkas, O.Slav. vl'ku, Alban. ulk, Grk.
lu'kos, Lat. lupus, Gothic wulfs < *wlkwos), 'snow/winter' (hima: Avest.
zim/ziiam, Grk. xiOn 'snow', -khimos, Lat. hiems, Gaul. Giamon-,
Armen. jiun 'snow', etc.), 'birch tree' (bhUrja, Pamir Dial. furz,
Osset. boers(oe), etc. are found in E. Europe, Greater Iran and on the
northwestern borders of the subcontinent (Kashmir). However, neither
snow nor birch are typical for the Panjab or Indian plains. It is, again,
theoretically possible that these words belonged to the supposed original
IE/IA vocabulary of the northwestern Himalayas and therefore could have
been transported westward by a hypothetical IE westward emigration. But,
this scenario is contradicted by the evidence of the last section dealing
with all the other IE 'cold climate' words that have not been preserved
in India, not even in the Northwest or in the Himalayas. Therefore, words
such as those for 'wolf' and 'snow' rather indicate linguistic memories
of a colder climate than an export of words to Iran and Europe, such as
that for the high altitude Kashmirian birch tree.
More importantly, typical Indian grammatical and lexical innovations
are not found among the other Indo-European languages. While some, stemming
from the IIr period, are met with in Old Iranian (pronoun ah-am 'I', Avest.
az@m; Nom.Pl. azvAsa-as, Avest. aspa^onghO, etc.), the typical Indian
innovations found already in the RV (jabhAra for jahAra, sede/mene, absolutives,
etc.) are not. The first type of innovation is attributed to the common
source language, i.e. Indo-Iranian rather than OIA influencing the neighboring
Old Iranian.[N.151] It would be against all rules of (IE and non-IE) comparative
linguistics to assume that such late, (low-level, in term of family tree
or cladistics) developments should not apply just in the single case
of Indo-Aryan, and to assume, instead, early innovation inside India (azvAs-as,
ratha, babhru 'mongoose', etc.) that would have selectively been exported
to Iran (of course, minus all *typical Indian* RV innovations!), innovations
that would not have been carried out in the rest of the Indo-European languages:
just too many auxiliary assumptions!
The autochthonous theory would, again, have to assume that all
such Indian innovations would have been carried out after the speakers
of Iranian (and/or all other Indo-European languages) had left
the subcontinent, which is contradicted by absence of typical Indian
words in other Indo-European languages and in Iranian, and by the absence
further west of Indo-Iranian innovations such as the chariot (*ratha).
Occam's razor applies again.

To go into some further detail, the many archaisms in Old Iranian
cannot readily be explained by an Iranian emigration from India: First
of all when and where should this have happened? SW and Central Southern
Iran was occupied by the Elamians, the western parts were settled by W.
Iranians only after c. 1000 BCE (cf. Hintze 1998) and were settled by non-IE
peoples before. About E. Iran/Afghanistan we have only stray Mesopotamian,
copious archaeological and a few isolated Vedic sources. They point to
non-IE settlements as well: in S. Iran, Elamian up to Bampur, Meluhhan
east of it in Baluchistan/Sindh, and Arattan north of it in Sistan, while
the northern fringe was occupied by the Bactria-Margiana substratum that
is visible in Indo-Iranian (Witzel 1999a,b).
If the Iranians had moved out from the Panjab at an ''early date'',
they would have missed, the supposed 'Panjab innovation' of the use of
the (domesticated) horse (already Indo-European: Latin equus, etc.),
and especially the later one of the horse-drawn chariot (IIr. ratha).
If, on the other hand, they had moved out a little later, say, after the
Mitanni Indo-Aryans, all of this would have come too late to account for
the non-appearance of Iranian tribes in the RV which has only some (pre-)Iranian
looking names (Witzel 1999), camels (RV 8) and some Afghani
rivers (gomatI in the Suleiman Range, sarayu in Herat, sarasvatI in Arachosia).
We cannot make the Iranians move from India to Iran, say, at 5000 or 2600
BCE, then to introduce the innovation of horse pastoralism (not present
in the subcontinent then!), and then let them take part, at c. 2000 BCE,
in the innovation of the already IIr horse drawn chariot (*ratha, §
12.6, §21).
In addition, Old Iranian in general is too archaic to have moved
out of India after the composition of the RV: while Old Avestan (of zarathus'tra)
has, to be sure, many forms which correspond to Rgvedic ones, much
of his language is even more archaic: as has been mentioned, the retention
of the use of neuter plural with singular of the verb is something that
has elsewhere been retained in Hittite; the old nom. pl. masc. in -As =
Avest. -As-, -A- is found in the RV next to the innovation devAs-as;
an archaism in the perfect stem which appears in the RV such as babhr-
(Avest. bawr-) next to the new formation RV jabhr-; archaisms in names
such as jamad-agni (= Avest. jimat~) next to the innovative RV
gamad, etc.
All of this points to a time of separation of IA and Iranian
before the RV and thus, not inside India. The hypothetical argument that
these traits were preserved in the Panjab side by side with the RV does
not hold, for Iranian does not show any typical Indian elements (see
above).[N.152]
If the Iranians had indeed left the Panjab before the RV, serious
chronological difficulties would arise, whether we were to accept the autochthonous
theory of the RV well before the Indus civ. (2600/5000 BCE) or whether
we accept the traditional Indologist's dating of the RV sometime in the
2nd mill. BCE. In all these cases, Iranian is far too archaic to
have been a close neighbor, in the Panjab, of the Rgvedic dialects.
Further, it lacks any indication of Indian influence on its grammar and
vocabulary (see above).
One can only conclude that Old Iranian, including Avestan,
split off from (Proto-)Old Indo-Aryan (Vedic, etc.) at an early date, preserved
some archaic features while developing innovations on its own (s > h, kh
> x, j'n > sn, etc.) and that it was never in early close contact
with the Panjab and its substrate languages. Such close contact would also
have effected the one typical phonetical development that the Iranians
actually 'escaped' before the Vedic dialects of the RV adopted or developed
it, the retroflex sounds (see above §15).

§18. Absence of Indian influence in Mitanni-Indo-Aryan

The same scenario as discussed so far is indicated by the IA loan words
in the Hurrite language of the Mitanni realm in northern Iraq/Syria (c.
1460-1330 BCE). Again, if there was an (early) emigration out of India
by (Vedic) Indo-Aryans it would be surprising that even the Mitanni documents
do not show typical South Asian influence.[N.153]
Rather, is obvious that the remnants of early IA in Mitanni belong
to a pre-Rgvedic stage of IA, as is seen in the preservation of IIr
-zdh- > Ved. -edh-, in priyamazdha (bi-ir-ia-ma-as'-da[N.154]) : Ved. priyamedha
: Avest. -mazdA. These texts also still have IIr ai > Ved. e (aika
: eka in aikavartana). Another early item is the retention of IIr. j'h
> Ved. h in vas'ana(s')s'aya 'of the race track' = [vaz'hanasya] cf. Ved.
vAhana- (EWA II 536, Diakonoff 1971: 80, Hock 1999: 2); they also
share the Rgvedic (and Avestan) preference for r (pinkara for piGgala,
parita for palita). Importantly, Mitanni-IA has no trace of retroflexion.
How could all of this be possible if one supposes an emigration
from India, in some cases (Misra 1992) even after the supposed date of
the RV (5000 BCE)? The RV is, after all, a text that already has all these
features.
The Mitanni loan words (Mayrhofer 1979, EWA III 569 sqq.) from
Pre-Vedic OIA share the typical IIr innovations, such as the new Asura
gods varuNa (EWA II 515 a-ru-na, u'-ru-wa-na, not found in Iran)
and mitra (Avest. mithra, Mitanni mi-it-ra), and indra (Mit. in-da-ra/in-tar,
Avest. iNdra)[N.155] who is marginalized in Iran, and the nAsatya (na-s'a-ti-ya-an-na
= azvin, Avest. na^onghaithiia).[N.156] These innovations also include
the new the concept of Rta (Iran. arta, in very late Avest. pronunciation
= aS~a), contained in names such as artasmara (ar-ta-as'-s'u-ma-ra), artadhAman
(ar-ta-ta-a-ma),[N.157] and perhaps also the newly introduced ritual drink,
sauma, IIr *sauma (Ved. soma, Avest. haoma, EWA II 749). The Mitanni sources
show extensive use of the domesticated horse (as'uua, cf. names for horse
colors[N.158]), the chariot (rattas') and chariot racing (a-i-ka-, ti-e-ra-,
pa-an-za-, s'a-at-ta-, na-a-[w]a-wa-ar-ta-an-na= [aika-, tri-, panca-,
satta- (see n.160), nava-vartana]; tus'ratta/tuis'eratta = RV tveSaratha).
To see in these names a post-RV form of OIA, a Prakrit
(Misra 1992, Elst 1999:183),[N.159] is therefore misguided and based on
insufficient knowledge of near Eastern languages. Misra's 'prAkRtic influences'
in Mitanni IA are due to the peculiarities of the cuneiform writing system
and to the Mitanni form of the Hurrite language. It has been asserted for
long that satta in satta-vartana 'seven turns' has been influenced by Hurrite
s'inti 'seven' (J. Friedrich 1940, cf. Cowgill 1986: 23, Diakonoff 1971:
81; this is under discussion again,[N.160] but clearly a Hurrite development);
however, the words starting with b- such as bi- did not receive their b-
from a MIA pronunciation of vi,[N.161] as Misra maintains, but are due
to the fact that Mitanni does not allow initial v- (Diakonoff 1971: 30,
45). In sum, the Mitanni IA words are not Prakritic but (pre-)Rgvedic.
On the other hand, the Mitanni texts clearly indicate
typical OIA (Vedic) linguistic innovation: aika-vartana (a-i-ka-ua-ar-ta-an-na)[N.162]
instead of Ir. aiva- or general IE *oino- > *aina-), and yet, the vocabulary
does not yet show signs of typical South Asian influence: for example,
there is no retroflexation in mani-nnu, Avest. maini, Elam O.P. *bara-mani,
and Latin monIle. But retroflexation is precisely what is found once OIA
enters South Asia: RV maNi 'jewel'.[N.163] Finally Mitanni IA has no typical
South Asian loan words such as ANi 'lynch pin'.
In sum, Mitanni-IA is older than the RV, cannot have come from
the Panjab but must have been spoken in the north-eastern border areas
of Mesopotamia where it influenced the Hurrite language of the Mitanni
that belongs, just like its later relative Urartu, to the Caucasus group
of languages.
Indeed, some of the rather indirect IA influx into the Near East
may have been earlier than the one visible in Mitanni. The Kassite conquerors
of Mesopotamia (c. 1677-1152 BCE) have a sun god s'uriias',[N.164] perhaps
also the marut and maybe even bhaga (bugas'?), as well as the personal
name abirat(t)as' (abhiratha); but otherwise, the vocabulary of their largely
unknown language hardly shows any IA influence, not even in their many
designations for the horse and horse names[N.165] (Balkan 1954).[N.166]

If one now thinks through the implications of the autochthonous
theory again, the ancestors of the Mitanni Indo-Aryans would have left
India very early indeed (well before their favorite date of the RV, 2600/5000
BCE, and well before 1900 BCE, the supposed date of the brAhmaNa texts,
Kak 1994). They would have done so with the Rgvedic dialect features (ai
> e, zdh > edh) not yet in place, and without any of the alleged MIA forms
of Misra (satta, etc.), but with the typical OIA and IIr terms for horses
and chariot racing (before their invention and introduction into South
Asia)! They would have lingered somewhere in N.W. Iran to emerge around
1400 BCE as Hurrianized Mitanni-IA, with some remnant IA words and some
terms of IA religion. But they would have done so without any of the local
South Asian innovations[N.167] (no retroflex in mani-, no -edh-, -h-, etc.)
that are already found in the RV, and also without any particularly Indian
words (lion, tiger, peacock, lotus, lynch pin ANi) all of which would have
been 'selectively' forgotten while only typical IA and IE words were remembered.
In short, a string of contradictions and improbabilities. Occam's razor
applies again.
Similarly, the parna (Gr. parnoi, Ved. paNi) and dasa/dAsa ~
Avest. (az'i) dahAka, ~Ved. dAsa ahIzu, Lat. dahi, Grk. daai, Avest. da^ongha
(:: airiia, cf. dahae :: arii), would have escaped their Panjab IA enemies
(RV dasa, dasyu, paNi :: ari, arya, Arya) northwards in order to
settle at the northern fringes of Iran well before the time of the
RV, e.g., as the parna, still without retroflexion and accompanying loss
of -r-. Unfortunately for the autochthonous theory, these N. Ir.
tribes occur already in the RV, significantly not as real life but
as mythical enemies, and now with retroflexion. Significantly, all while
the same authors who composed the RV hymns are supposed by the indigenist
and revisionist writers not to remember anything beyond the Panjab. Again,
multiple contradictions: Occam's razor applies.

***

Summary: Linguistics

In sum, all of the linguistic data and the multitude of possible
autochthonous scenarios based on them lead to the same kinds of culs de
sac or Holzwege.
There is no evidence at all for the development of IE, IIr, and
even of pre-OIA/Vedic inside the subcontinent. It is contradicted, among
other items, by the Iranian and Mitanni evidence. An emigration of the
Iranians and other Indo-Europeans[N.168] from the subcontinent, as supposed
by adherents of the autochthonous theories, is excluded by the linguistic
evidence at large.
To maintain an Indian homeland of IE, IIr, and Pre-OIA requires
multiple special pleading of a sort and magnitude that no biologist, astronomer
or physicist would tolerate. Simply put, why should we allow special, linguistic
pleading just in the case of India? There is nothing in the development
of human language in India that intrinsically differs from the rest of
the world. Occam's razor applies.

So far, most of the linguistic evidence presented in the
previous sections has been neglected by advocates of the autochthonous
theory,[N.169] and if it has been marshaled at all, it has been done so
ad hoc, even by the lone, autochthonously minded Indian historical linguist,
S.S. Misra. His rewriting of IE linguistics remains incidental and idiosyncratic,
and it results in multiple contradictions, just as the rest of the theory.
The autochthonists must do a lot of homework and try to contradict
the linguistic data discussed above (detailed in § 13-18) before they
can hope to have any impact on linguistic discussions.

Conversely, the data derived from linguistic study are consistent
throughout: they clearly indicate that an Eastern IE language, the Vedic
branch of IIr, has been Indianized and has grammatically innovated after
its arrival in the Panjab, while Iranian has escaped this influence as
it did not enter the subcontinent then. Exactly how the IA language
and the IA spiritual and material culture of the archaeologically still
little traced Indo-Aryan speaking tribes was introduced, that is still
an open and very much debated question. It can be traced securely, so far,
only in the evidence coming from the texts (horses, chariots, religion,
ritual, poetics, etc.) and from the features of the language itself that
have been discussed here at length. Possibly, genetic evidence, especially
that deriving from studies of the male Y chromosome, may add to the picture
in the near future.

In the sequel, the evidence from texts, archaeology, and some
natural ("hard") sciences will be adduced. This is perhaps the right place
to point out that these fields of scholarship proceed in their own fashion
and with various methodologies, and that the data obtained from all these
fields have their own characteristics. It is not always the case, for example,
that evidence from archaeology can flawlessly be matched with linguistic
or genetic data. The nature of evidence in these fields often is too disparate.
Some scholars (such as the archaeologist Shaffer) actually refuse to take
into account anything that is outside archaeology, especially the
"tyrannical" linguistics. This is of course not quite true, as palaeontology
is tacitly accepted. Second, it must be pointed out that many of these
fields, such as archaeology, provide "hard" evidence, but then interpret
their data in various ways, just as it occurs in the other humanities.
The same is true also, e.g. for studies of palaeo-climate. The distinction
between the 'hard sciences' and the humanities is not as strict as is often
made out.
Nevertheless, we should keep looking for overlaps in evidence
and draw our own, often preliminary conclusions, -- preliminary as several
if not all of the fields involved are in constant development.

CHRONOLOGY

§19. Lack of agreement of the autochthonous theory
with the historical evidence: dating of kings and teachers

Turning, presently, to the evidence preserved in the texts themselves
and in history as well as archaeology, it might be useful to deal first
with an item that has captured the imagination of scholars east and west
for at least a century, that is, the various lists of early kings (and
also of Vedic teachers).
Advocates of the autochthonous theory stress that the traditional
lists of Indian kings (in the mahAbhArata, rAmAyaNa, purANas) go back to
the fourth millennium BCE and even earlier. However, even during the formative
period of the great Epic at c. 300 BCE, Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador
to the Maurya court at Patna, reported to have heard of a traditional list
of 153 kings that covered 6042 years.[N.170] This would, of course, lead
back well beyond the traditional beginning of the kaliyuga at 3102
BCE (cf. Witzel 1990). The latter date, however, is due only to back-calculation,
based on the alignment of all then known(!) five planets, that was
carried out by vArAhamihira in the 6th cent. CE (Kochhar 1999). In other
words, all dates based on a beginning of the kaliyuga in 3102 are worthless.
The royal lists rest, as almost everywhere in traditional cultures,
on Bardic traditions.[N.171] In India, they derive from lists orally transmitted
and constantly reshaped by the sUta bards according to local conditions
and personal preference (Parry and Lord, 1930 sqq.)[N.172] The eager efforts
made by many Indian scholars of various backgrounds to rescue these lists
as representing actual historical facts[N.173] therefore are ultimately
futile.[N.174] The only early purANic kings we can substantiate are those
listed in the Vedas as these texts, once composed, could no longer be changed.
The process is exceptionally clear in the development of the
tale of the Great Battle (dAzarAjJa, RV 7.18, see Witzel 1995). In the
RV this is fought between the bharata chieftain sudAs on the one side,
and the pUru chief with his nine 'royal' allies on the other. It took place
on the paruSNI in central Panjab. The mahAbhArata battle, however, is fought
between the kaurava (of bharata descent) and the pANDava, both of the new
kuru tribe, near the sarasvatI in kurukSetra (modern Haryana).
Because of the extremely careful oral method of RV preservation
we can take the RV report as a sort of tape recording of contemporary news,
news that is of course biased by contemporary political considerations
and the mentality of the victor. However, already the Middle Vedic texts
indicate a gradual shift in the non-Rgvedic and non-specialized, more popular
traditions: there is a general confusion of the characters and the location
involved, leading to that of the well known mahAbhArata personages and
localities (details in Witzel, 1995). All of this does not inspire a great
deal of credibility in the ''facts'' reported by the Epic and purANic
texts (Pargiter 1913, Morton Smith 1973, Talageri 1993, 2000).[N.175] These
texts have clearly lifted (parts of) lineages, fragment by
fragment, from the Vedas and have supplied the rest (Soehnen 1986)
--from hypothetical, otherwise unknown traditions-- or, as can be seen
in the case of the mahAbhArata,[N.176] from poetical imagination.
Similarly, the idea that the Vedas contain reliable lists of
teachers rests on typically weak foundations. First of all, the various
of vaMza lists at the end of ZB 10, ZB 14 = BAU 2, BAU 6, JUB
4, KA 15, cf. ChU 8.15, etc.) do not agree with each other. Second, they
trace the line of teachers back to the gods, to prajApati. Yet even if
we neglect this small detail and take only the later parts of these lists
at face value (Morton Smith 1966), we do not know when to place them in
time, as the absolute dates of the teachers are totally unknown, except
for some overlaps with chiefs and kings known from the Vedic texts, as
tentatively worked out by Morton Smith (1973).
Any historical reconstruction based on such lists must then start
with assumptions, and even the usual average number of 20 or 30 years attributed
to a generation does not work for teacher/student relationships, e.g.,
mahidAsa aitareya supposedly lived for 116 years and can have had
many generations of students, just like any modern academic teacher. In
addition, the vaMza lists mention that certain Veda students had several
teachers. In fact, yAjJavalkya, whom the ZB sometimes pictures as an old
man, could have had students throughout his life, and of various ages.
All of this makes the use of the vaMza lists for reliable dating almost
impossible.
Again, the general question, asked several times already, has
to be put here as well: if the traditional Bardic data are unreliable in
traditional societies everywhere around the world, why should the same
kind of data, shaped and reshaped by the later Vedic texts, the Epics and
the purANas, be a full and true account of South Asian prehistory? As in
the cases listed above (and further below), this amounts to very special
pleading, in fact again to another unmotivated exemption of India from
the generally accepted procedures of the sciences, and of scholarship in
general.
The genealogical data also do not readily fit into the combined,
general picture as provided by the texts and by other disciplines such
as archaeology, to which we will turn now.

ARCHAEOLOGY

§ 20. Archaeology and texts

Archaeology strives to discover, but cannot establish all the
major factors that make up a certain civilization, as this science is limited
to physical remains, from buildings and art to pottery, plants and human
bones. As long as archaeologists cannot find readable inscriptions and
texts along with their findings, the interpretation of the spiritual background
and much of the society of the culture in question remains tentative.[N.177]
The Mayas, e.g., were regarded as exceptionally peaceful people until their
texts could be read. We cannot yet read the Indus inscriptions, and we
do not yet have access to the archaeological remains, if indeed preserved,
of the Rgvedic period. Many of the archaeological interpretations thus
remain tentative, and by their very nature, they tend to shift with each
new major discovery.
In the sequel, some of the archaeological and textual data are
compared with what the autochthonous theories make of such evidence. It
must be pointed out that autochthonists frequently rely on the dicta of
recent archaeologists who stress that there was no major cultural break
in South Asia from 6500 BCE well into the prehistorical period. However,
archaeological evidence -- extremely important as it is -- forms just one
facet of several of a given culture, and in many respects only of its the
most materialistic aspects. It must agree with what the other sciences
supply on information about the period in question. In other words,
where is the archaeologist that can tell us what the famous Indus "ziva"
or "pazupati" seal really signifies? We will return to this question below.

§21. RV and the Indus civilization: horses and
chariots

The autochthonous theory asserts a rather early date for the RV
(pre-Indus civilization, at 2600 or 5000 BCE). Indeed, the RV does not
know of the Indus towns, of international commerce, of the Indus script,
of the Indus staple food, wheat, nor of the late-Indus cereal, rice
(see below §23). However, all of that is only evidence ex silentio,
while the rich Rgvedic materials dealing with the domesticated horse, the
horse-drawn chariot, or chariot races do not fit at all with such early
dates for the RV[N.178] (see immediately below) and rather put it after
c. 2000 BCE. The closely related older Avestan texts, too,[N.179] point
to a pastoralist, copper/bronze culture with use of horse and chariot,
quite similar to that of the RV.
Clearly, the use of the horse drawn chariot in sport and war
during the RV period was mainly, but not exclusively, a noblemen's
occupation. In the autochthonous theory, the ''relative absence of horse
bones'' in the Indus civilization[N.180] is therefore explained away
by the auxiliary assumption that the horse was only occasionally
imported for the nobility, who nevertheless were regarded as very good
horse trainers. This overlooks the fact that riding, too, is attested in
the RV and that is clearly linked to groups socially situated below the
nobility (Falk 1995). However, not one clear example of horse bones
exists in the Indus excavations[N.181] and elsewhere in North India before
c. 1700 BCE (Meadow 1997, 1998). Even Bokonyi (1997), who sought to identify
some horse remains in the Indus civilization, states that ''horses reached
the Indian subcontinent in an already domesticated form coming from the
Inner Asiatic horse domestication centers.''
Indeed, well recorded and stratified finds of horse figures and
later on, of horse bones first occur in the Kachi valley on the border
of Sindh/E. Baluchistan (c. 1700 BCE), when the Indus civilization already
had disintegrated. Some supposed early finds of horses elsewhere are those
of equid bones and teeth at Surkotada[N.182] (in Cutch, W. Gujarat) from
the late Harappan period,[N.183] which belong to hemiones (Equus hemionus
khur, the onager or half-ass), not to true horses (Equus caballus, see
Meadow and Patel, 1997, Meadow 1998). Other claims, such as the invented
one of an indigenous Rgvedic 17-ribbed Sivalensis horse,[N.184] are totally
unsubstantiated, or they are from unclear stratigraphies and/or have not
been documented well enough[N.185] as to allow a clear distinction between
horse, hemione or donkey; still others are simply too late.[N.186] At any
rate, depictions of horses are altogether absent during the Indus
period.[N.187]
Some of the earliest uses of the domesticated horse had
been reported from the Copper Age site of Dereivka on the Dnyepr River
(for riding, c. 4200-3800 BCE, now withdrawn)[N.188] and similarly,
from the Copper Age site of Botai in N. Kazakhstan (c. 3300-2900 BCE.)[N.189]
Some of the first attested remnants of primitive spoke-wheeled chariots
and horse burials occur at Sintashta on the Tobol-Ishim rivers, east
of the Urals (2100-1800 BCE.)[N.190] From there, a clear trail (Hiebert
1995, 192 sqq.) leads towards the subcontinent: from a somewhat unclear
picture in the BMAC (Parpola 1988: 285, 288) to Pirak (horse figurines,
c. 1700 BCE (Jarrige 1979),[N.191] bones in Kachi from 1700 BCE, the Swat
Valley at c. 1400 BCE (painted sherds, horse burials, Stacul 1987).
In the subcontinent, the horse (along with the camel) first appears
in the RV in literary context, and in Kachi in archaeological context at
c. 1700 BCE. It is important to note that horse riding is not completely
unknown to the RV; it is mentioned of the ''horsemen'', the Azvin
(Coomaraswamy 1941). It seems to have been common among the lower classes
both among gods (azvin, marut) and humans (Falk 1995) and may have been
used for herding purposes while the nobility preferred chariots for sport
and war. Without a proper saddle and stirrups, invented much later, warfare
from horseback was not yet practical. However, just as clearly attested
in Near Eastern documents of the second millennium BCE, chariots were used
in warfare on favorable terrain (but certainly not while crossing mountainous
territory!);[N.192] and, the texts frequently refer to their use
in sport. Horse riding is not important in the RV, and it is, so
far, not found at all in the Indus civilization. If the horse had been
an important animal of the Indus elite, one would also expect it in art
- just as in Pirak or Swat, e.g., on the Indus seals. It does not
show.
The occasional occurrence of horse riding in the RV and still
earlier in the Ukraine (Anthony 1991, 1997, Falk 1995) cannot, of course,
prove a date of the RV at 4000 BCE as early practices easily appear in
later texts (see also §28-30). The use of the horse-drawn chariot
in the RV at that early time is archaeologically impossible: even the heavy,
oxen- drawn wagon evolved only in the late 4th millennium (first attested
in Mesopotamia), and the chariot itself was developed only around 2000
BCE in the Ukraine/Ural area (and/or in Mesopotamia, Littauer and Crouwel
1996). The sudden appearance in South Asia of the (domesticated) horse
and of the chariot remain clear indicators either of IIr/IA presence,
or of their cultural influence on unknown, neighboring pastoralists who
first brought the horse into S. Asia, -- in that case similar to what happened
at the same time in Mesopotamia in the case of the Kassites and, somewhat
less probable, the Mitanni.[N.193]
Autochthonists such as Sethna (1980, 1981, 1992) or Rajaram (2000)
want to find horses and chariots in Indus inscriptions. However, this relies
on interpretation of unknown symbols[N.194] and, in the case of Rajaram,
even on actual fraud (Witzel and Farmer 2000). The original argument used
by Sethna (1981) to date the Vedas before the Indus civilization, in autochthonous
circles usually referred to as 'seminal,' 'clinching', etc., is the
absence of the Indus commodity, cotton, in Vedic texts down to the sUtras
where kArpAsa 'made of cotton' is first attested. He wonders how the Vedic
Indians would not have used cotton in the hot Indian climate. However,
the texts regularly refer to woolen and flaxen garments. Wool is of course
used in the cold Panjab winter. Absence of a word, such as 'rice' (see
§23), in sacred (hieratic) texts does not prove its non-occurrence.
With the same justification he could maintain that Vedic Indians did not
yet fart since the non-hieratic, vulgar pardati is attested only in post-Vedic
texts. The Iranians, again, have maintained the ancient custom (Avestan
pard, IE *pRd) -- or did they learn it only after they left India?

§22. Absence of towns in the RV

The absence of towns and the occurrence of ruins (armaka, vailasthAna,
cf. Falk 1981) in the RV poses another problem for the autochthonous theory.
The urban Indus civilization disintegrated around 1900 BCE and the population
reverted to village level settlements while expanding eastwards into Haryana/W.
Uttar Pradesh (even with some smaller towns, Shaffer 1999).
A later Vedic text (PB 25.10) tells of these ruins especially
those located in the sarasvatI (= Ghaggar-Hakra) region (cf. Burrow 1963,
Rau 1983, Falk 1981). TB 2.4.6.8 actually says that inhabitants (of which
areas?) had moved on (Falk 1981), and AB 3.45, one of the oldest
brAhmaNa texts, speaks of the long wildernesses (dIrgha araNya) in
the west as opposed to a more settled east (Witzel 1987). This reflects
reality: there are only a few iron age (PGW) time settlements in the sarasvatI/Hakra
area (Mughal 1997). TB may reflect some memory of the post-Harappan period,[N.195]
when a considerable segment of the Indus population shifted eastwards after
the loss of waters of the Ghaggar-Hakra to the Yamuna and Beas (Shaffer
and Lichtenstein, 1995:138, Mughal 1997, Shaffer 1999).
Some advocates of the autochthonous theory (Bh. Singh 1995)
want to find in the references of the RV, with its large 1000-pillared
houses, 100/1000-doored houses, etc. a reference to the Indus cities. Apart
from the fact that 100-pillared houses have not yet been found in the Harappan
civilization, such Rgvedic expressions are part and parcel of the traditional
poetical hyperbole, where '100' or '1000' just mean 'many', and, amusingly,
such expressions occur only in mythological contexts (sahasradvAr 7.88.5;
sahasrasthUna 5.62.6 (made of copper/bronze and gold, 5.62.7), 2.41.5;
zatadura 1.51.3, 10.99.3). Who would deny the gods houses that are
100-1000 times bigger and better than human ones? Or, Indra his 1000 testicles?
(6.46.3, 8.19.32). Occasionally, we even meet with metal forts -- but again
only in myth. The same applies to 'boats with a hundred oars', RV 1.116.5.
'Ocean going' ships refer to the ships that travel through the (night time)
sky, such as that of Bhujyu (RV 1.112.6, 116.3-5, 117.14, 119.4, etc.,
cf. the Avestan pAuruua at Y 5.61, Oettinger 1988). All such items occur
in comparisons or in mythology. In sum, all of this 'evidence' for RV Indus
cities and oceanic trade (Frawley, S. P. Gupta, Bh. Singh, etc.)[N.196]
is made of so many 'cities of the Gandharva', gandharvanagara, or
'fata morganas'. It is based on imaginary and erroneous RV interpretation,
-- in short, on bad Vedic philology.
Further, if the RV is older than 2600 BCE or even of 5000 BCE,
how does it only know of pur, simple mud wall and palisade forts (Rau 1976,
1983, 1997), and not of the large, brick-built human houses, villages and
cities of the Indus civilization? Note also that even in later Vedic texts,
grAma does not mean ''village'' but only ''wagon train (on the move), temporary
settlement" (Rau 1997).
In short, the Indus cities are never mentioned; we only find,
sometimes even named, ruins[N.197] and their potsherds (kapAla). Since
an early, pre-Indus date of the RV is to be excluded on other, internal
grounds (horses, chariots), these ruins as well as those on the sarasvatI
(PB) may refer to those of the Indus civilization.
However, both the Veda and the Avesta know of bricks: Ved.
iSTakA (VS/TS), Avest. is'tiia, -is'tuua (cf. Tochar. izcem, Burushaski
diS.c.i'k). The similarity (but not, identity!) in sound allows to establish
an isolated common IIr. root *is't, an early loan-word that is supported
by the divergent forms of the Tocharian and Burushaski words. The source,
(an) unknown Central Asian language(s), with **is't/is'ts', will be that
of the Bactro-Margiana Archaeological complex (see Witzel 1999a,b) with
its brick buildings and town-like settlements (of 2100 BCE). An Indus
origin is unlikely, as the widely spread, slightly divergent form of the
word in O. Iranian, Tocharian and Burushaski points to Central Asia, not
the Indus.

§23. Absence of wheat and rice in the RV

The RV also does not mention the staple of the Indus civilization,
wheat, found in the area since the seventh millennium BCE. It appears
only later on, in Middle Vedic texts (godhUma, MS 1.2.8+). The form of
the word is of clear Near/Middle Eastern origin (Hittite kant, O.Egypt.
xnd, Avestan gantuma), but it has been influenced by popular etymology
(Skt. go-dhUma ''cow smoke''). It echoes, in its initial syllable,
the Dravidian word for 'wheat' (Kannada gOdi, Tamil kOti) and its Pamir/Near
Eastern antecedents, such as Bur. gur 'barley', 'wheat, wheat colored'.[N.198]
Just as in the much later case of tea/chai, the path of its spread
is clear: Near Eastern *kant /Pre-Iran. *gantum has entered via the northern
Iranian trade route (Media-Turkmenistan-Margiana/Bactria-Aratta/Sistan)
and has resulted in Avest. gantuma and the later Iranian forms: M.Pers.
gandum, Pashto g'an@m < *gandUma?, Yigdha gondum, etc. (Berger 1959:
40 sq, EWA II 498). It has been crossed with the PKartv., PEC *GOl*e, Burushaski/
Drav. form beginning with g(h)o- (for details see Witzel 1999a,b).
Instead of wheat, the Rgvedic people --and their gods -- ate
barley (yava), but not yet rice which had already made its appearance
in this region during the late Indus civilization (Kenoyer 1998). However,
as is well known, ritual always is more conservative real life behavior,
and the RV reflects ritual and is exclusively ritual poetry. The word for
''rice'' is of local S. Asian origin (Witzel 1999a,b) and ultimately perhaps
Austric (note Benedict's Austro-Tai *boR[a]ts). Just like wheat, rice is
not yet found in the Rgveda, no doubt because this is a hieratic text that
lists only the traditional food (also of the gods), barley.
Talageri 2000: 124 sqq. has misunderstood my reference (Witzel
1987: 176) to the absence of tigers and of domesticated rice in the RV
--mostly grown, apart from the Himalayan regions, well east of Delhi throughout
history -- by misconstruing a relative clause. (The matter is clearly indicated,
however, in Witzel 1995: 101-2). Amusingly, he has therefore excoriated
me for saying that there were no tigers in the Panjab then. (The absence
of the tiger in the RV is more complex than that of rice and is in
need of special attention; it may be due to an early conflation of the
IIr/IA words for 'tiger', 'lion' and, maybe even 'panther').
In post-Rgvedic times (AV, YV), however, vrIhi is already the
favorite food and an offering to the gods, though the gods themselves are
still said to grow barley on the sarasvatI (AV 6.30.1). The evidence of
the cereals and culinary habits thus exactly fits the pattern of immigration:
The speakers of Indo-Aryan (just as the Indo-Europeans: *yewo 'the (food)
grass')[N.199] knew only barley and very gradually took over wheat and
rice inside S. Asia.
If the RV had been composed in the Panjab in (pre-)Indus times,
it certainly would contain a few notices on the staple food of this area,
wheat. It is not found.

§24 RV class society and the Indus civilization

The autochthonous theory maintains that the Rgvedic Indo-Aryans
were living in complex society, with mention of cities and numerous professions.[N.200]
This, again, is careless philology: The 'complex society' of the RV is
none other than the (Dume'zilian) three class society of the Indo-Iranians,
consisting of nobility (rAjanya, later: kSatriya), poet/priests (brahma'n,
RSi, vipra, kavi; Rtvij, hotR, purohita, etc., later: brAhmaNa), and 'the
people' (viz, later: vaizya). Very few occupations are mentioned in the
RV, which is typical for a society of self-sufficient pastoralists. There
are a few artisans such as the carpenter (takSan), smith (dhmAtR, karmAra),
chariot-builder (rathakAra, attested only AV+).
It is also clear that the Rgvedic Arya employed some sections
of the local populations, i.e. the lower class, called zUdra since
RV 10.90, for agriculture (ploughman kInAza, RV, see Kuiper 1991, Witzel
1999a,b), and probably for washing (AV+, Witzel 1986), and especially for
pottery (kulAla MS+, cf. W. Rau 1983). Sacred vessels were made by Brahmins
in the most archaic fashion, without the use of a potter's wheel (as is
still done for everyday vessels in the Hindukush!) and without change in
style; such pottery is therefore undatable by style (without thermo-luminescence
methods), if ever found. Vedic everyday, household vessels were made in
local style by zUdra workmen. (Note, e.g., the continuation of Indus style
motives in the Cemetery H culture -- but with new cultural traits, that
is, cremation and urn burial along with urn paintings expressing the Vedic
belief in a homunculus 'soul', sketched inside the peacock (Vats 1940,
Schmidt 1980, Witzel 1984, Falk 1986). All these are occupations
are such that no member of the three Arya classes would voluntarily undertake,
as proud pastoralists.
As has briefly been discussed above, I neglect here all further
discussions of a 'complicated class system, castes, foreign trade, elaborate
palaces', and the like, as they are all based on bad Rgvedic philology.
Typically, such assertions are made, while quoting Sanskrit sources from
the RV (Bhagavan Singh 1995, Frawley forthc., etc.), without translation
or without philological discussion, so that everyone is free to understand
what one likes to see in these passages. A Rgvedic 'boat with 100 oars'
is not a kind of Spanish galley but clearly belongs to the realm of the
gods, to mythology, -- and to modern, autochthonous myth making.

§25. The sarasvatI and dating of the RV
and the brAhmaNas

The disappearance of the sarasvatI,[N.201] the modern Sarsuti-Ghaggar-Hakra
river and dry river bed in the desert on both sides of the present Indian/Pakistani
border, is often used by autochthonists as a means of dating the RV. It
is well known from brAhmaNa texts that the sarasvatI then disappeared in
the desert (PB 25.10, JB 2.297 : Caland § 156 ). Landsat pictures
(Yash Pal 1984) are interpreted by some as showing the drying up of this
ancient river at various dates in the third millennium; Kak insists on
1900 BCE, Kalyanaraman (1999: 2) on 1900-1500 BCE (in 1999) now: 1700/1300
BCE).[N.202] However, Landsat or aerial photos by themselves cannot determine
the date of ancient river courses; local geological and archaeological
investigations on the ground are necessary. They still have not yet been
carried out sufficiently, though the Hakra area has been surveyed archaeologically
on the Pakistani side by M.R. Mughal (1997), and geological data are now
also available in some more detail for the Indian side (Radhakrishnan &
Merh 1999, S.P. Gupta 1995). They establish several palaeo-channels for
this river, that easily changed course, like all Panjab rivers flowing
on these flat alluvial plains. Which one of these courses would fit the
Indus period and which one the Rgvedic period still needs to be sorted
out. Choosing an arbitrary date of 1900 or 1400 BCE is useless in order
to fix the RV (well) before this date.
The upper course of the Ghaggar, however, is not dry even
today, as some scholars state; it is still known as the small river Sarsuti.
Also, it has been long known, and is easily visible on many maps, that
the lower, dry bed of the Sarsuti (Ghaggar) continues well beyond the Pakistani
border as Hakra (Wilhelmy 1969, Witzel 1984, 1987), and it seems to continue
further south as the Nara channel in Sindh, finally emptying
into the Rann of Cutch (Oldham 1886, Raverty 1892, Witzel 1994). However,
there is a playa next to the long gap in the lower course of the Hakra
river and the Indus, covered by sand dunes near Fort Derawar, east of Khanpur,
Pakistan. If the sarasvatI indeed ended there in an inland delta (Possehl
1997), the Nara channel would rather represent the lower course of the
Sutlej (or be a branch of the Indus).
It must be underlined that a considerable segment of the Harappan
population shifted eastwards from the Indus and the Ghaggar-Hakra the post-Harappan
period and built new settlements[N.203] in the Eastern Panjab and Haryana/UP.
Shaffer and Lichtenstein (1995:138) attribute this in part to the loss
of waters of the Ghaggar-Hakra to the Yamuna and Beas (Mughal 1997).
The basic literary facts, however, are the following: the sarasvatI
is well known and highly praised in the RV as a great stream. Once it is
called the only river flowing from the mountains to the samudra (RV 7.95.2).
Samudra indicates a large body of water (Klaus 1986), either the terrestrial
ocean, or a mythological ocean (at the end of the world or in the night
sky, Witzel 1984, cf. RV 7.6.7!), or a terminal lake, or just a ''confluence
of rivers'' (RV 6.72.3).[N.204] Given the semi-mythical nature of the sarasvatI,
as goddess and as mythical river in the sky or on earth, the RV passages
are not always clear enough to decide which one is intended in each particular
instance (Witzel 1984). However, the brAhmaNa texts (JB 2.297, PB 25.10)
clearly state that the sarasvatI disappears or ''dives under'' in the desert
at a place called vinazana / upamajjana. (Later texts such as the purANas
mythologize that it flows underground from there up to the confluence of
the yamunA and gaGgA at prayAga/Allahabad, something that is based on an
old, general Eurasian concept, see Witzel 1984).
The sarasvatI region, the post-Rgvedic kurukSetra, comprises
the land between the sarasvatI (mod. Sarsuti, Ghaggar) and the dRSadvatI
(mod. Chautang) to its east. It does not include the lower sarasvatI (mod.
Hakra) which is occasionally referred to as parisaraka, parisrAvatI (VAdhB
4.75), parINah (PB 25.13.1) 'the area surrounded (by the sarasvatI)' (Witzel
1984), a wording that clearly indicates delta-like configurations (playa),
with terminal lake(s) (samudra).

In the dry bed of the Hakra many potsherds (kapAla) used in ritual
could be found (PB 25.10); they belonged to the given up settlements (arma,
armaka, Falk 1981) of the late Harappan and post-Harappan period (cf. above,
TB 2.4.6.8). Indeed, the dry bed of the Ghaggar-Hakra still is lined with
Harappan sites (and cluttered with millions of kapAla sherds, Mughal
1997). But many of these settlements are situated on the actual flood plain
of the Ghaggar-Hakra, which speaks against an enormous river during the
Harappan (or the supposed 'pre-Harappan Rgvedic') period. In fact, the
estimates of archaeologists on the exact date of the drying up of much
of the SarasvatI differ considerably. Mughal proposes that the Hakra was
a perennial river in the 4th and early 3rd millennium BCE and that it had
dried up about the end of the second.[N.205] Other dates range from 2500-2200
BCE to 2200-1700 BCE, and Francfort (1985 sqq.) thinks of a much earlier
period. It is now supposed that the sarasvatI lost the mass of its
water volume to the nearby yamunA due to tectonic upheaval (Yash Pal 1984;
Radhakrishnan and Mehr 1999). Even then, the old sarasvatI-Sutlej can never
have been larger than the Indus, the only other river that is highly praised
in the RV. The question thus is, why the sarasvatI actually is praised
that much?
RV 7.95.2, a hymn of the middle Rgvedic period, indeed
speaks of the sarasvatI flowing to the samudra. However, this is not unambiguous,
due to the various meanings of the word. Even then, the sarasvatI
may never have been as mighty a contemporary river as the RV wants to make
us believe, because, as is well known, RV style is generally quite hyperbolic.
In book 7, the RSi vasiSTha, an immigrant from west of the Indus, praises
the local sarasvatI area of his patron sudAs after the victory in the Ten
Kings' Battle. Whether the immigrant vasiSTha was from the Iranian area
of haraxvaitI (= sarasvatI, Arachosia) or not, he may have echoed the praise
of the ancient sarasvatI, that is the local S. Avestan haraxvaitI or the
Milky Way (Witzel 1984), or he may just have spoken in the hyperbolic style
of the RV.
These textual data do not inspire confidence in the categorically
stated autochthonous theory that the RV proves a mighty sarasvatI, flowing
from the Himalayan mountains to the Indian ocean.
However, a neglected contemporary piece of evidence from the
middle RV period, believed to have been composed by vizvAmitra, the opponent
of vasiSTha, is found in RV 3.33. Based on internal RV evidence, this hymn
describes a situation of only a few moths or years before RV 7.95.2 (with
the sarasvatI 'flowing from the mountains to the samudra', whatever its
meaning!). The RV books 3 (vizvAmitra) and 7 (vasiSTha) both represent
a relatively late time frame among some five known generations of the Rgvedic
chieftains of the Middle RV period, chiefs that belong to the noble
bharata and pUru lineages. The autochthonous theory overlooks that RV 3.33[N.206]
already speaks of a necessarily smaller sarasvatI: the sudAs hymn
3.33 refers to the confluence of the Beas and Sutlej (vipAz, zutudrI).[N.207]
This means that the Beas had already captured the Sutlej away from the
sarasvatI, dwarfing its water supply.[N.208] While the Sutlej is fed by
Himalayan glaciers, the Sarsuti is but a small local river depending on
rain water.
In sum, the middle and later RV (books 3, 7 and the late
book, 10.75) already depict the present day situation, with the sarasvatI
having lost most of its water to the Sutlej (and even earlier, much of
it also to the yamunA). It was no longer the large river it might have
been before the early Rgvedic period.
The Rgvedic evidence, supposing the Indologists' 'traditional'
date of the text at c. 1500-1000 BCE, also agrees remarkably well
with the new evidence from Bahawalpur/Cholistan (Mughal 1997) which indicates
that the area along the lower Hakra (sarasvatI) was abandoned by its people
who moved eastwards after c. 1400 BCE. The area was not settled again until
well into the iron age, with the introduction of the Painted Gray Ware
culture (PGW) in the area at c. 800 BCE. At that time, we indeed hear of
sparse settlements in the west (AB 3.45). This also agrees with the
scenario developed earlier (Witzel 1995): an early immigration (c. 1700
BCE - 1450 BCE) of the yadu-turvaza, anu-druhyu in to the Panjab, when
there possibly still was a somewhat ''larger sarasvatI'' (Mughal 1997,
with details), followed by the immigration of the bharata tribe (from across
the Indus, JB 3.237-8 : Caland § 204) only after the major part of
the sarasvatI waters had been captured by the Beas (and, before, a large
part of it by the yamunA). This scenario, consistent with the geological,
archaeological and textual evidence is in striking contrast to that of
the autochthonous theory.
The area around the sarasvatI also was not, as (some of) the
autochthonous theorists maintain, the center of Vedic culture or of the
whole of the Indus civilization, at least not during the whole span of
this civilization. As Possehl (1997) shows, the clusters of settlement
gradually moved eastwards, from Baluchistan/Sindh to Haryana (Possehl 1997),
and this movement continued (Lichtenstein and Shaffer, 1999) into Haryana/U.P.
even after the end of the Indus civilization in c. 1900 BCE. (Even then,
the sarasvatI area is not specially favored). During the RV period,
there was no clear political, cultural center, either; the diverse, 30-50
tribes and clans were spread out over all of the Panjab, and there
was no central authority. The situation in the Indus period was equally
diffuse, with at least five major cities: Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro, Ganweriwala,
Rakhigarhi, Dholavira in Cutch.[N.209] Even during its heyday, thus, there
were several concentrations but no central area. It cannot be assumed that
because there are many (c. 400) Indus settlements in the Ghaggar-Hakra
are, this indicates the center of the Indus civilization. Rather, this
concentration is due to something very obvious --though not mentioned by
advocates of a renamed "Indus-SarasvatI civilization"-- that is,
to the fact that the lower sarasvatI area is "fossil": it has not changed,
since the Indus period, in geomorphology, it has hardly ever been settled
since by more than a few people, and, most importantly, it has neither
received new alluvium nor has it been subject to ploughing.
The area around the upper sarasvatI, the later kurukSetra, instead
of being of central importance all through the older RV, is singled
out only in the middle and later parts of the RV, in books 3, 7 (and 1,
10 etc.) as the 'best place on earth' (RV 3.53.11, Witzel 1995), as this
had become the territory of the victorious bharata tribe under sudAs (and,
it may be added, also one of the major settlement areas of the post-Indus
culture).

According to the autochthonous theory, the sarasvatI dried out
by 1900/1500 BCE, and the brAhmaNas which mention its disappearance must
therefore be dated about that time. All of this does not fit the internal
evidence, is based on bad philology and shows, once again, the rather ad
hoc, selective methods used by advocates of the autochthonous theory. For,
the first appearance of iron, the 'black metal' (kRSNa/zyAma ayas) in S.
Asia, well known to the brAhmaNa style texts, is only at c. 1200 BCE (Chakrabarti
1979, 1992, Rau 1974, 1983, cf. now, however, Possehl-Gullapalli who point
to 1000 BCE). But, iron is already found in texts much earlier than the
brAhmaNas (i.e. AV, and in the YV saMhitAs: MS, KS, TS; however, not yet
in the RV). This fact is frequently misunderstood by historians and archaeologists
who simply quote the older RV translations that render ayas by 'iron' while
it means 'copper' or maybe, also 'bronze' (Rau 1974, 1983). It was
only in the post-RV period that copper was called loha 'the red (metal)'
(VS 18.13, TS 4.7.5.1, ZB 2.6.4.5, 13.2.2.18, etc.), often in opposition
to the 'black metal'. To date brAhmaNa texts at 1900 BCE (see below on
astronomy, §28-30) is simply impossible.
At the bottom of the sudden popularity of the sarasvatI is of
course the nationalistic wish to have the "center of the Harappan Civilization"
within the boundaries of India, along a "Vedic" river the sarasvatI --
as if such recent boundaries played any role in 2600-1900 BCE! Unfortunately
for such chauvinists, neither are the majority of the 'sarasvatI' sites
along the Ghaggar in India, but along the Hakra in Pakistan. Nor
does the name 'sarasvatI' apply for the period in qustion. The old designation
of the Sarsuti-Ghaggar-Hakra, later renamed as the Vedic sarasvatI, seems
to have been the substrate name *Vis'ampa¬/z' or Vipa¬/z' (Witzel
1999).

§26. Harappan fire rituals?

B. B. Lal and others claim to have discovered fire altars in the
early and later stages (at least 2200 BCE, B.K. Thapar 1975) of the Harappan
site of Kalibangan (Lal 1984, 1997: 121-124), and similarly, at Lothal.
Some of these fire places are in a domestic and some in a public context:
the latter are aligned on a raised platform in a row of seven, facing East,
and near a well and bath pavements suggesting ceremonial(?) bathing. Some
archaeologists, even including some who accept a version of the immigration
theory such as R. Allchin, regard them as similar to, or identical
with, the seven dhiSNya hearths of the post-Rgvedic, 'classical' zrauta
ritual. However, it should have raised some suspicion that 'fire rituals'
are now detected at every other copper/bronze or even Neolithic site in
northern and western India.
The amusing denouement is evident in Lal 1997:121, (plate XXXA)
itself: "within the altar stood a stele made of clay". This kind of "stele"
is still found today in modern fire places of the area -- it serves
as a prop for the cooking pot.
What is indeed visible at Kalibangan (photos in Allchin 1982,
Lal 1997: plate XXXIIIA, cf. Banawali pl. XXXVIA)? There are seven(?) fire
places, three(?) destroyed by later construction. They are closely aligned
next to each other and face a brick wall. Nothing of this, including the
nearby brick-built bathing places, fits any recorded Vedic ritual,
neither that of the RV nor of the later (zrauta) ritual. The RV knows only
of 1-3 fires, and in zrauta ritual we find the three fires arranged in
a typical, somewhat irregular, triangular fashion. The seven dhiSNya fire
altars of the complicated post-Rgvedic soma ritual are additional fires,
which are placed east of the three main fires on the trapezoid mahAvedi
platform (Staal 1983). This feature, however, is not met with at Kalibangan
either. It also does not fit the Vedic evidence, but that of a regular
kitchen, that animal bones are found in some of the supposed fire altars.
Further, Vedic fire altars are not apsidal as the fire places at Kalibangan
and Banawali. At best, these are independent and untypical precursors,
in a non-Vedic context, that were adapted into the later zrauta ritual
as the soma dhiSNyas. However, this is entirely impossible to prove. Such
proof would have to come from a study of the (so far hypothetical) interrelations
between certain features of the Indus religion and the zrauta ritual. The
matter underlines how careful archaeologists should be in drawing conclusions
about religion and ritual when interpreting material remains.
In short, the Kalibangan hearths do not represent Vedic ritual
as we know it from the large array of Vedic texts. They may be nothing
more than a community kitchen.[N.210]

§27. Cultural continuity: pottery and the Indus
script

Advocates of the autochthonous theory also underline that the
lack of dramatic change in the material culture of northern South Asia
indicates an unbroken tradition that can be traced back to c. 7000 BCE
without any intrusive culture found during this period.[N.211] Archaeologists
such as J. Shaffer and M. Kenoyer stress this remarkable continuity as
well. Shaffer (1995, 1999) summarizes: ''The shift by Harappans [in the
late/post-Indus period] is the only archaeologically documented west-to-east
movement of human populations in South Asia before the first half of the
first millennium BC.''
The advocates of the autochthonous theory therefore conveniently
conclude that there has been no "Aryan invasion." However, as has been
discussed above (§8-10) the Vedic texts themselves speak of various
types of transhumance and migration movements.
On the other hand, there is, indeed, some degree of continuity
from the late Indus civilization, that was carried over into the early
Gangetic tradition. One clear example is the continuity of weights (Kenoyer
1995: 224, 1998). Many other cultural traits (such as pottery) have been
carried over in the same fashion.
This, of course, also tends to explain why the "Vedic" (or IA)
tradition is so little visible in the archaeological record so far. We
still are looking, in the Greater Panjab, for the ''smoking gun''
of the horse, horse furnishings, the spoke-wheeled chariot, Vedic ritual
implements, etc. However, at least on the fringes of the subcontinent,
in the Kachi Plain of E. Baluchistan/Sindh and in the Gandhara Grave Culture
of Swat, we find some indications, by mid-second millennium BCE, in the
first horses of South Asia, and horse sacrifice (Allchin 1995, Dani 1992).
However, if one would again try to think through the autochthonous
theory that stresses the strong continuity in Indian cultural development
from c. 7000 BCE onwards, and would suppose, with them, that the RV preceded
the Indus Civilization, one is faced by a paradox: how is possible that
Rgvedic features such as horse races, preponderance of cattle raising,
non-use of wheat (and rice), lack of permanent settlements, complicated
soma rituals without temples, cremation burial, etc. all of which hypothetically
disappear completely during the Harappan period and re-emerge in the post-Rgvedic
YV saMhitA, brAhmaNa and upaniSadic periods of the Gangetic epoch? This
is yet another strange non sequitur which does not fit in with established
cultural and textual sequences. In sum, the assertion that the RV is older
than the Indus civilization does not work: there were no horse-drawn chariots
yet at the beginning of the Indus period (2600 BCE) in the Greater Panjab
or anywhere else, but they emerge only around 2000 BCE in the Ural area
and in Mesopotamia.

Continuity of the Indus script

The autochthonous theory maintains that the brahmI script of
Asoka (3rd c. BCE is derived from the Indus script (Rajaram and Jha
2000). However, this is a complex logographic script with at some 400 (Parpola
1994), or rather some 600 signs (Wells 1998), many of which are used only
in certain sign combinations, typical for logographic scripts such as Chinese
or Japanese. The very number of signs makes an interpretation as alphabetic
or syllabary script impossible.[N.212] Some of them were probably used
as rebus symbols, just as is the case with all early logographic scripts
from Egypt to China: the sounds of one word were used to indicate
another one with same or similar pronunciation but with a different
meaning, such as pair/pear//bear/to bear/bare, two/too//to/do, their/there/they're,
etc.
Unlike the Indus script with its logograms, the brahmI script,
on the other hand, is a real alphabetical script (on phonemic principles)
with only one quasi-syllabary feature: as in devanAgarI, short -a
remains unexpressed. In the North-West of the subcontinent, brahmI had
a predecessor, the kharoSThI script. Both go back, directly or indirectly,
to the Aramaic script (Falk 1993, Salomon 1995), which was widely used
in the Persian empire, and even by Asoka, in Afghanistan. kharoSThI, and
brahmI even more so, have been adjusted extremely well to represent the
Indian sound system, certainly under the influence of traditional Brahmin
phonetic science.
If the autochthonous theory were right, the descent of
brahmI from the Indus script would resemble that of the early Semitic alphabets
from Hieroglyphic Egyptian. However, in the case of Egyptian we know the
pronunciation of the Hieroglyphic logographs, while no accepted decipherment
has emerged in more than half a century of study of the Indus script (Parpola
1994, Possehl 1996).[N.213] Given the c. 600 signs of the Indus script,
it is of course very easy to find similarities in the 50-odd, very regularly
shaped, geometrical signs of the brahmI script (ka is a simple +, Tha
is: o, etc.). Even if there indeed was an initial carry-over of remnants
of the Indus script into the post-Indus period (Kenoyer 1995: 224) there
is no sign of any continuity of the use of the script before the first
inscriptions in brahmI in the middle of the third c. BCE.[N.214] The script
simply vanished, like the Maya script, when its practical use for administration
and/or business disappeared (Allchin 1995, Possehl 1996). In addition,
writing and script are not mentioned in the Vedic and early Buddhist texts
(v. Hinueber 1989). Typically, pANini, probably a subject of the Persians
in gandhAra, has two foreign names, the Persian name of 'script' dipi (Pers.
dipi [dhipi] < Elamite tip/tup) as well as its regular development in
East Iranian (lipi), from which the Skt. and Pkt. terminology is derived.
In short, just as in many other areas of S. Asian culture, the
disappearance of writing is witness to the large gap between the well-organized
urban civilization of the Indus culture at c. 1900 BCE, its village-like
local successor cultures in E. Panjab/Haryana etc., the subsequent superimposition/adaptation
of pastoral Vedic culture, and finally, the newly emerging Gangetic urban
culture of pre-Mauryan times in the 5th century BCE.

VEDIC TEXTS AND SCIENCE

§28. The ''astronomical code of the RV''

One of the most arresting claims of the autochthonous theory is
that of an astronomical code in the organization of hymns of the RV (Kak
1994), which he believes to establish a tradition of sophisticated observational
astronomy going back to events of 3000 or 4000 BCE[N.215], a few millennia
after the Aryans' hypothetical arrival in the seventh millennium BCE (Kak
1994: 20-22); or more specifically, that certain combinations of numbers
enumerating the syllables, verses and hymns in the Rgveda coincide with
numbers indicating the periods of planetary motions.
However, to begin with, Kak's discovery is derived from the traditional
ordering of the hymns and verses of the RV, a schematic one of the post-Rgvedic
period most probably executed in the kuru realm of the Eastern Panjab/Haryana
at c. 1200/1000 BCE (Witzel 1997, 2001); it was canonized a few hundred
years later by an Easterner, zAkalya, during the late brAhmaNa period (roughly,
700-500 BCE) -- and that is the version Kak uses!) Other versions of the
RV differ slightly; even a text contemporary with zAkalya, ZB, says that
the purUravas hymn (RV 10.95) had 15 verses while our RV has 18. Which
size and ordering of the text to follow, then?
The real question, of course, is: why should anybody order one's
texts according to some astronomical patterns? Rather, what kind
of method would present itself to a people with a strong, well-trained
memory but without the use of script? One could think, for example, of
a strictly metrical pattern (as is indeed used in the soma hymns of RV
9 or the Avestan gAthAs), or one according to the use of the hymns in ritual
(as is used by the yajurveda). None of the two is the one followed in the
bulk of the RV. Instead, as has been well known for more than a hundred
years (Oldenberg 1888), and indeed since Vedic times(!), the RV is organized
in three levels: according to authors, i.e. poets' clans (the 'family books',
RV 2-7, and 8), deities (hymns to Agni, Indra, then others), and according
to meter (hymns with longer meters come first). The core 'books' of the
RV (2-7) are arranged from short books to long ones, and, conversely, inside
each book according to a descending order numbers of hymns per deity, and
numbers of verses per hymn. All of this is not mentioned by Kak;
for details on the exact scheme and the -- only apparent -- disturbances[N.216]
in it, see Oldenberg (1888, Witzel 1997). In sum, if one knows -- just
as modern practice still prescribes-- the author, the deity and the
meter, one knows where a hymn is to be found inside the core section
(RV 2-7) of the RV collection. This is a simple but very effective method
in an oral tradition without script.
Interestingly, Kak joins this theory with observations about
the piling up of bricks of the agnicayana altars. It certainly cannot be
doubted that the altar is identified, in the typical fashion of the post-Rgvedic
brAhmaNa texts, with prajApati, the divine sponsor of the ritual and the
year, and that some calculations are connected with that. However, there
was no agnicayana yet at the time of the RV. Even the mantra collections
used for this ritual are late and form a third layer in the collections
of the post-Rgvedic yajurveda saMhitA texts; the same it true for the discussion
of the ritual in the brAhmaNa style texts. Any combination of the numbers
of bricks in the agnicayana with the order and number of hymns and mantras
of the RV therefore is not cogent, to begin with.
To find astronomical reasons behind this arrangement requires
extra-ordinary ingenuity on the part of the original, contemporary composers
and arrangers of the RV -- or the decipherer, S. Kak. That they should
constitute an original Rgvedic ''astronomical code'', -- based on the
post-Rgvedic(!) arrangement of the RV-saMhitA and the later, post-Rgvedic(!)
construction of the agnicayana fire-altars -- is simply impossible.
It also does not help the scheme that the knowledge of this code is said
to have disappeared very shortly after the composition of the texts.
Further, Kak's scheme suffers, even if one takes its rather involved
numerical schemes for granted, from inconsistency, such as the arbitrary
use of multiplication factors that deliver the desired results for the
various courses of the planets (which are not even attested in Vedic texts,
see M. Yano, forthc.) In fact, references to astronomical data in the RV
are generally very vague, and limited, as in other ancient cultures, to
a few facts of direct observation by the naked eye (Pingree 1973, 1981,
Witzel 1972, 1984, 1986, Plofker 1996, Yano forthc.).
More details could be added. To mention just the most elaborate
one, K. Plofker's (1996) discussion of Kak's attempt in the section
''Probabilistic Validation'' (1994: 106-107). This section intends to prove
that the presence of planetary period numbers in the Rgvedic hymn number
combinations (containing 461 distinct integers ranging from 43 to 1017),
derived from all ten books of the RV, cannot be coincidental. As Plofker
shows, "the set of values generated from sums of a given set of numbers
is generally not uniformly distributed over the interval it spans; as a
rule, there will be a few very small sums and a few very large ones, but
most will cluster about the middle of the interval. In this example, out
of the 461 hymn combination numbers, no fewer than 320 fall within the
range 301--800 containing most of the planetary period constants. This,
combined with the fact that Dr. Kak (by his own account; p. 105) permits
errors of at least pm 1 in his matching of numbers, means that the high
proportion of matches has no statistical significance whatever."
This mathematical demonstration would not even have been necessary
because of the derived, secondary nature of hymn numbers in zAkalya's
redaction of the RV (see above). Or, in the same vein, when it is alleged
by Kak that the combined number of hymns in the fourth, sixth, eighth,
and ninth books of the RV was chosen to be 339 because that
number is roughly equivalent to ''the number of disks of the sun or the
moon to measure the path across the sky... [or] sun-steps'' (Kak
1994: 100, accepted by Elst 1999: 110), one must immediately note, not
only that RV 9 is a late book (Oldenberg 1888, Proferes 1999), but that
these books have the following additional hymns (Oldenberg 1888): 4.57-58;
6.74-75; 8.96-101, 9.112-113, not to mention quite a few additional hymns
inside these very books. This simple observation renders Kak's whole scheme
numerically impossible.
In short, the whole matter boils down to over-interpretation
of some facts that are internally inconsistent.[N.217] Non licet.

§29. Astronomy: the equinoxes in ZB

Vedic astronomy has been discussed[N.218] since Weber (1860),
Thibaut (1885), Tilak (1893), Jacobi, Oldenberg and Whitney[N.219]
-- all of them writing well before the discovery of the Indus civilization,
at a time when nothing of Indian prehistory was known before the supposedly
firm date of the Buddha.[N.220] Some passages in the ZB have been under
discussion since then that seem to refer to the equinoxes, and would
indicate the date of observation of these celestial phenomena. ZB 2.1.2.3
seems to say that the spring equinox is in the asterism kRttikA: kRttikAsv
agnI AdadhIta ... etA ha vai prAcyai dizo na cyavante / sarvANi ha
vA anyAni nakSatrANi prAcyai dizaz cyavante. ... saptarSIn u ha sma
vai pura rkSA ity AcakSate. ''One should found one's fires under
the (moon house of the) kRttikAs... These, they do not deviate from the
eastern direction. All other moon houses, they deviate from the eastern
direction... Formerly, one called the saptarSis 'the Bears'.'' This statement,
if taken for a literal description of the 'immobile' position of the Pleiades,
is possible only for the third millennium, at c. 2300 BCE (Kak even has
2950 BCE, cf. Elst 1999: 96)
The basic question is, of course, whether such astronomical references
in Vedic texts must be taken at face value, i.e. literally. The above passage
is followed by a set of other ones which allow setting up the fires at
other times, most of which are motivated and justified, like this one,
by inherent brAhmaNa texts' concerns and logic. Further, astronomical observations
in the Vedic texts are of a more general nature, and are clearly based
on what is easily observable with the naked eye over the course of a few
years (Pingree 1973, 1981 Plofker 1996, Yano forthc., Witzel 1972, 1984,
1999c). If one takes this conclusion as one's baseline, some statements
in the Babylonian text MUL.APIN are of interest. The text is probably to
be dated in the late second millennium (Pingree 1998), thus earlier than
ZB but much closer to it than the supposed date of the kRttikA observation
in the third millennium. MUL.APIN says more or less what ZB does
in the section under discussion, namely that the Pleiades are in the east
and that Ursa Maior is in the north. And that would be the end of the whole
question.
However, even if one admits that the sentences quoted above refer
to contemporary observation and have been transmitted as such over several
millennia, a serious problem remains: the advocates of the autochthonous
theory, unwittingly, commit the rather common but no less serious mistake
of dating a text according to a single early fact mentioned in it. But,
one cannot, and in fact nobody does date the RV, just because Indra occasionally
still has a stone weapon, to the (late) stone age. Texts contain reminiscences
and archaic words and concepts; we can only date them by their latest,
not their earliest datable features. Or, to put it somewhat facetiously,
if I write ''looking at my digital clock I saw that the sun
rose at 6:00 a.m.,'' then my sentence cannot be dated, because of the unconscious,
but unscientific use of ''to rise'', to the period before the revolutionary
book of Copernicus (1507 AD), but only to the present computer age.
If ZB 2.1.2.3 (and also the neglected passage in BZS 27.5)[N.221]
indeed would indicate the spring equinox in kRttikA, then this may very
well be a popular or learned remembrance of times long past, for the same
passage of ZB also remembers that the Great Wagon/Big Dipper (ursa maior)
was "formerly" called ''the bears''. This is an old Indo-European expression
(Greek, Latin, etc.). The name RkSAH indeed occurs once in the RV
and this is copied in TA, ZB (Witzel 1999c), before the asterism acquired
its well-known name ''the Seven RSi'' (sapta rSayaH, cf. Avest. haptO
iriNga = *sapta liGgA(ni), cf. now Plofker, EJVS 6-2, 2000).
In addition, we simply cannot date the ZB in the third millennium
BCE, as it has strong evidence of iron which emerged in India only by 1200/1000
BCE, and as ZB is very close in its cultural, economic, socio-political,
and philosophical development to the time of the Buddha, who lived around
the middle of the first mill. BCE.
As seen many times by now, the advocates of the autochthonous
theories take one --in case, a rather dubious-- datum and use it
to reinterpret Vedic linguistic, textual, ritual history while they neglect
all the other contradictory data derived from comparative astronomy, archaeology,
textual study, etc. This does not achieve a 'paradigm shift',
not even special pleading, but simply is faulty reasoning.

§30: The jyotiSa vedAGga and the solstices

Another favorite item brought forward for an early date of the
Vedic texts has been the date assigned to the jyotiSa of lagaDha,
a vedAGga text attached to the Rgveda tradition (a later version exists
in the yajurveda tradition as well). Since this is an appendix to the Veda,
virtually all other Vedic texts must predate it. Its date, however, hinges
on that assigned to the solstice as described in this text. The basic question
is the same as in the case of the kRttikA equinox: whether the description
as given in the jyotiSa is also the date of the text in which it is transmitted.
Again, this would mean to date the text according to its earliest item.
However, the astronomy involved here is not as straightforward
as it usually is made out to be. T. K. S. Sastry (1985:13) and R.
Kochhar (1999) think of an early date, between 1370 and 1150 BCE,
as the winter solstice is described to be in zraviSThA/dhaniSThA nakSatra.
Pingree's (1973: 10) estimate is c. 1180 BCE.
While Sastry believes that the text preserves a tradition
dating back to that period, Pingree (1973: 10) stresses that it is unknown
where lagaDha would have exactly placed the boundaries of the nakSatra
dhaniSThA, and what was his exact determination of the longitude of the
Sun. Any mistake in the exact position of the beginning of a nakSatra as
well as the rough jyotiSa intercalation-cycle based on the inexact length
of the year as 365 days (instead of c. 365 1/4) makes all such back-calculations
prone to error by centuries.
Further, lagaDha puts the winter solstice on the
new moon of mAgha at the heliacal rising of dhaniSThA, which post-dates
the establishment of the calendrical scheme with amAnta months. This is
late Vedic, at best. In TS 7. 4. 8 and KB 4.4, the beginning of the year
is on a full-moon night, and the months are pUrNimAnta. KB 19.2-3, however,
already has amAnta months, the year beginning sometimes preceded by an
intercalary month (as in the Babylonian calendar of MUL.APIN). This is
just one of the several reasons why Pingree (1973: 3, 1987, 1998) introduces
Babylonian astronomy and thinks that the astronomy of the Rk recension
of the jyotiSa "was formulated in the fifth or fourth century BC on the
basis of information about originally-Mesopotamian methods and parameters
transmitted to India during the Achaemenid occupation of the Indus Valley
between ca. 513 and 326 BC." This would produce a fairly low date post
quem for the section of KB in question; however, the transfer of
such ideas can also have followed other methods and routes.
Sastry (1985: 15) agrees as far as the date of the jyotiSa text
itself is concerned and adds the observation that its astronomical system
is the same as that taught in the gargasaMhitA, which Pingree (1987: 295)
places in the 5th or 4th centuries BCE. However, one of its constituent
parts, the Yuga PurANa, which mentions the post-Alexandrian Greeks, was
dated by Mitchiner (1986: 82) only to the end of the last century BCE.
Further indication for a late date of the jyotiSa is that the
language of the text is post-Vedic, which lets Sastry assume that
it was redacted by someone belonging "the last centuries BC" (1985: 12).
However, it must be added and stressed that the text is actually composed
in late Epic language. It has not been noticed that it does not only have
the typical long compounds, but also those with tat- as first part,
and many metrical 'space fillers' such as tu, caiva, tathA, tathaiva ca,
eva ca, api ca, which must necessarily be part of the very composition.
The particle vai occurs once, however not, as usual in Vedic, in second
position of a sentence or pAda but at the end of a pAda (along with eva
ca!). This agrees with late Epic practice, as seen in Mbh. 12 and RAm.
1 and 7 (Witzel, in prep.).
In short, only if one is convinced that lagaDha intended
the solstice to be exactly at alpha Delphini of dhaniSThA, one can date
his observations back to the late second millennium. Since that cannot
be shown beyond doubt, since the composition of the text is in Late Epic
language, and since its contents have clear resemblances to Babylonian
works, the text must belong to a late period, to the last centuries BCE.
In sum, if one were to take seriously the autochthonous dates
of the jyotiSa at 1400 BCE, (and, accordingly that of the ZB, or
even that of the BZS, at 2900 BCE)[N.222], and if one would re-arrange
the dates of Vedic literature accordingly, one would have the further,
considerable difficulty of explaining, e.g., the use of iron and chariots
at 2900 BCE, or the date of the later parts of ZB at c. 1500 BCE, while
they fit in with the cultural and political climate just before the emergence
of the Magadha realm and the Buddha around 500/400 BCE.

§31. Geometry: Zulba sUtras.

The case of the geometry of the late Vedic zulba sUtras is of
a similar nature. The advocates of the autochthonous theory maintain, with
A. Seidenberg (1962, 1978, 1983),[N.223] that the geometry of the
fire altars in the zatapatha brAhmaNa and some earlier (translated) texts
such as taittirIya saMhitA, precedes the early geometry of Greece and Mesopotamia,
and that it can be dated prior to 1700 BCE (cf. Elst 1999: 99).
Seidenberg has reached this conclusion by a comparison of the
geometry of the Pythagoreans with that of the Vedic texts and some Babylonian
sources. The latter have the full system in place at that early date, but
their prehistory is not visible in existent Mesopotamian sources.
Due to some differences in the three systems (such as algebraic vs. geometric
procedures), Seidenberg (1983: 121) excludes mutual borrowing. Rather,
he assumes a common source of the three systems that is older than 1700
BCE, and then tries to find echoes of it in pre-brAhmaNa texts, even at
RV 1.67.10, etc. (which is much too vague about the building of fire altars
to allow proof), all without the use of bricks. Staal (1999) has recently
expanded on this problem, using my discussion of the common, non-Indo-Iranian
words for 'brick' in Avestan, Old Persian and Vedic (from *is't-) and has
assumed that the common source may well have been in the BMAC area (see
§22) .
Be that as it may, it is not a priori necessary that the similarities
and identities in mathematical procedure must go back to one common source.
To paraphrase A. Michaels (1978: 52 sqq., cf. 1983), who has carried out
an in-depth study of the zulba sUtras and their geometry: Vedic sacred
geometry is autochthonous, and analogies between various cultures
are not enough to prove actual historical exchange between them. The burden
of proof always is with the one who proposes such an exchange. (This has
not been supplied, pace Elst 1999: 99 sq.). In addition, Michaels distinguishes
between sacred geometry in general and its form transmitted in the zulba
sUtras. This is not always distinguished well (also not by Seidenberg),
especially when one simply identifies the theoretical knowledge of the
zulba sUtras with the more empirical knowledge and practice of the brAhmaNas
and zrauta sUtras. However, it is likely that the Zzulba sUtras as such
originated at the same time as the elaborate description of the ritual
and that these texts were all integral parts of the ritual sUtras
(kalpasUtra).
Michaels goes on to show (1978: 139 sq.) that the magical ideas
of Vedic ritual, together with certain practical (artisan's) faculties,
lead to the specific form of Vedic sacred geometry, which is basically
a logic-free, elementary geometry. However, its various pre-scientific
practices, or schemes of action, were transformed into general and theoretical
sentences. These could, in turn, always be checked for truth and could
be proved by the various practical schemes of action that were used in
Vedic ritual with its pre-scientific norms of identity. Michaels also stresses
that the connection between magical ideas and artisan's practice was from
the beginning only accessible to a small circle of specialists, the ones
knowledgeable in "measuring art"; its influence therefore is only visible
insofar as it leads to a specialization of a portion of the complete Vedic
ritual, again reserved for specialists.
While it has been quite clear for more than a hundred years that
these sUtra texts contain the knowledge of basic geometry (Seidenberg 1983,
Michaels 1978), including Pythagoras' theorem, it is now claimed that altar
constructions were used to represent astronomical knowledge (Kak 1994)
in the RV. However, even the post-Rgvedic texts say only that the three
ritual fires represent the earth, sun and moon, and that the offering priests
walk about in space. The complicated post-Rgvedic brick pilings on the
mahAvedi represent a bird (zyena) that will take the sponsor of the ritual
to heaven (e.g., the year as eagle ZB 12.2.3.7). There is no indication
of any typical brAhmaNa style speculation that goes beyond an identification
of the sponsor of the ritual with the creator god prajApati and the
year (with its 360(!) days, 10,800 muhUrta, at ZB 12.3.2.5;
zAGkhAyana AraNyaka 7.20, etc. (cf. §22, 26). Complicated astronomy
is absent.
If there is any surprising factor here, it is the ability of
the Vedic priests to work with such large numbers while they belonged to
a civilization that did not use the script or written numbers (though the
priests occasionally use twigs to represent very complicated schemes, such
as the order of certain repetitions of sAmans). However, the piling of
fire altars made of thousand(s) of bricks belongs to the post-Rgvedic period
(pace Seidenberg 1983: 123-4), and even then, occurs only in comparatively
late YV material, as has been pointed out above: the cayana is much later
than the soma and other rituals of the YV saMhitAs; it can at best be dated
to the beginning of the iron age (if we take tura kAvaSeya as one of its
originators, see Proferes 1999).
If there indeed is any older, local tradition is hidden behind
all of this, it may go back local, to non-Vedic (Indus?) sources. But that
remains, for the time being, pure speculation.

SUMMARY OF RESULTS

§32. Summary: The autochthonous theory

The autochthonous theory, in its various forms, leaves us with
multiple internal contradictions and open questions as far as time frame,
cultural content, archaeological, zoological, astronomical, mathematical,
linguistic and textual data are concerned. If such contradictions are noticed
at all by the revisionist and indigenist writers they are explained away
by new, auxiliary assumptions and theories, -- that is, by special pleading,
and often by extra-ordinarily special pleading. In short, all things being
equal, the new, disjointed theory falls prey to Occam's razor.[N.224]
If we would in fact assemble all of the autochthonous ''evidence''
(as has been attempted here in brief form) and think it through, torturous
as it may prove to be, we would have to rewrite not only Indian history,
but also many sections of archaeology, historical linguistics, Vedic literature,
historical geography, zoology, botany, astronomy, etc. To apply the new
"theory" consistently would amount to a "paradigm shift" in all these fields
of study. But biologists, for example, would not be amused.
In other words, should there be special rules in all these sciences
only as far as evidence from South Asia is concerned? Either science is
universal, or we may begin to write new regional or national accounts,
in fact new mythologies that include some observations of nature and the
sciences. Are we ready for a "Mythos of the Twenty-First century," written
by a Mr. japAgiri or sevatIparvat?

Certainly, a revisiting of old theories should be carried out
if the new evidence is strong and unambiguous. But the observations made
by revisionists and indigenists do not add up to a complete, self-contained
theory that is in agreement with the other, independently developed fields
of knowledge. Instead, it is rigged with lacunae and internal contradictions
and it frequently clashes with the established sciences. These features
make the autochthonous theory particularly unfavorable as a replacement
of earlier explanations.[N.225] A 'paradigm shift' can be maintained, as
has been shown time and again in the preceding sections, only by using
very special pleading. Occam's razor applies.
If the model of a transhumance type immigration or trickling
in of speakers of Old IA and subsequent acculturation (one last time, not
an ''invasion''!) is to be replaced, then such a new model has not yet
been found, and it has certainly not yet been shown to be probable by the
revisionists and indigenists. The burden of proof squarely rests on the
shoulders of the advocates of the new autochthonous theory.

To sum up: even when neglecting individual quirks,[N.226] the
various autochthonous proposals simply do not present a cogent picture.
They almost completely neglect the linguistic evidence, and they run into
serious chronological and geographical difficulties: they have horse drawn
chariots in S. Asia before their actual invention, horses in S. Asia before
their introduction from Central Asia, use of iron tools at 1900 BCE
before its first use at c. 1200/1000 BCE. They have the Rgvedic sarasvatI
flowing to the ocean while the RV indicates that it had already lost its
main source of water supply and must have ended in a terminal lake (samudra).
They must also distort the textual evidence of the RV to make
it fit supposed Harappan fire rituals, the use of the script, a developed
town civilization and its stratified society of traders and artisans, and
international maritime trade. And, they must rewrite the literary history
of the Vedas to fit in improbable dates for the composition of most
of its texts so that they agree with supposed contemporary astronomical
observations -- when everything else in these texts points to much later
dates.
Finally, they have the Old Indo-Aryan, or even the Indo-European
Proto-language, developing in the Panjab or even further east in northern
India while all non-IA[N.227] linguistic and historical evidence, including
that of linguistic palaeontology, clearly points to areas further northwest
and west. They maintain an Indian homeland for IE, while the expected
early South Asian loan words are entirely missing in all non-IA IE languages,
including even the neighboring Old Iranian, and while, conversely, such
loans are already copious in Vedic and are traceable to S. Asian substrate
sources.

***

Curiously, even the alleged historical development of the
Aryan ''invasion theory'' is not correct as usually stated.[N.228] It was
not developed and formulated in the 19th century to show that the Vedas
were composed before the 'Aryans' mixed with the indigenous 'races' and
to underline that the British conquest was similar to the 'Aryan conquest'.
In fact, the early period of IE linguistics did not have that concept at
all; the home of the IE language was thought, in the typical Romantic fashion
of the day, to be in India or in innermost Asia. The concept of the
IE language family, though first formulated by two late 18th century British
citizens (Lord Monboddo and William Jones, and in both cases not yet scientifically
at all [N.229]), the IE and (Indo-)Aryan theory was not developed by British
imperialists but by Danish and German scholars of the romanticism era,
such as R. Rask and F. Bopp (1816); it was further developed in the later
19th c. by German linguists such as the Leipzig Junggrammatiker school
whose members had no interest at all in British imperial designs (cf. Kennedy
1995, Trautmann 1999). The theory of an immigration into or invasion
of S. Asia by speakers of IA, based on the familiar concept of the Hunnic
and Germanic invasions of the Roman empire, and the idea of an IE 'race'
emerged only later in the 19th century and they were not even generally
accepted; for example the concept of an 'Aryan race' was rejected by the
now-maligned Indologist Max Mueller (1888) or, at length, by the Indo-Europeanist
H. Hirt (1907).
In addition, already by the end of the 19th century there was
a reaction against reading too much of IE linguistics and reconstructed
IE culture into the RV: the Frenchman Bergaigne stressed the complicated
nature of RV poetry and ritual, and the Germans Pischel and Geldner saw
the RV as a sort of kAvya rather than the simple nature poetry of semi-nomadic
pastoral tribals, a view fashionable in the first part of the 19th century.
Max Mueller was actually called mokSamUla[ra] in his time because of
the help he provided to the cause of Indian independence, all while working
at Oxford in the midst of imperialistic Britain (Mueller 1883, 1970).
He still saw the RV in the rather Romantic fashion of his youth,
the first half of the 19th century, as 'primordial' poetry of nature, as
some of our earliest texts; yet already for him, the Aryan concept had
nothing to do with 'race' but all with language and its 'decay'.[N.230]
If some British scholars used the evidence then available to cement the
position of their empire, it was natural for them in their own, Victorian
time, just as the use of the same data by, e.g., the champions of
the Dravidian irredenta (Trautmann 1999), by those who followed the then
fashionable 'race science' of the Frenchman de Gobineau and the British
writer Hamilton, or by Dalit reformers and by the leaders of the Indian
independence movement. However, the facts themselves remain, until (some
of them) are shown to be based on incorrect data or conclusions.
Present day non-Indian scholars, however, do no longer have any
colonialist or 'Eurocentric' agendas and, anyhow, do not feel the need
to defend 'traditional' western conclusions and theories of the 19th or
20th centuries.[N.231] Rather, if anything has been typical for the development
of western thought during the past few centuries, it has been the constant
change in intellectual approaches and fashions (see below) in methods and
in conclusions; all were guided, of course, by the ongoing dialectical
process. These many diverse concurrent developments are, as has been pointed
out above, often neglected by revisionist and indigenist historians who
frequently juxtapose, compare, or even equate the writings of the 19th
with those of the 20th century. Present day "western scholarship," however,
is very much aware of its own historical situation and theoretical position;
yet, it is firmly rooted, (post-modernism by and large excluded) in the
enlightenment tradition.

***

Notwithstanding the internal social and political reasons
for the clash between recent Indian historiography (now often termed 'Marxist')
and the new wave of revisionist and nationalistic writing that culminates
in the "Out of India Theory", it is its very emergence and
relative popularity, as late as two generations after Indian independence,
that must surprise. The 'revisionist project' certainly is not guided by
the principles of critical theory but takes, time and again, recourse to
pre-enlightenment beliefs in the authority of traditional religious texts
such as the purANas. In the end, it belongs, as has been pointed out earlier,[N.232]
to a different 'discourse' than that of historical and critical scholarship.
In other words, it continues the writing of religious literature, under
a contemporary, outwardly 'scientific' guise. Though the ones pursuing
this project use dialectic methods quite effectively, they frequently also
turn traditional Indian discussion methods and scholastic tricks to their
advantage.[N.233]
The revisionist and autochthonous project, then, should
not be regarded as scholarly in the usual post-enlightenment sense of the
word, but as an apologetic, ultimately religious undertaking aiming at
proving the 'truth' of traditional texts and beliefs. Worse, it is, in
many cases, not even scholastic scholarship at all but a political undertaking
aiming at 'rewriting' history out of national pride or for the purpose
of 'nation building'.
If such writings are presented under a superficial veneer of
objective scholarship they must be exposed as such,[N.234] at least in
the context of critical post-enlightenment scholarship. Alternatively,
they could simply not be taken seriously as historiography and could be
neglected (which seems to be the favorite attitude of most scholars in
Indology/Indian Studies). In both cases, however, they must be clearly
understood and described as traditional, (semi-)religious writings. Therefore
they should be regarded and used, not as scholarly contributions, but as
objects for the study of the traditional mind, -- uncomfortable as this
might be for some of their proponents, many of whom combine, in facile
fashion, an education in science with a traditional mindset.[N.235]

In view of this, it might not even seem necessary to 'decolonialize'
the Indian mind (cf. Witzel 1999d). However, the dominance of English
as the only true language of communication throughout the subcontinent,
and the strong Euro-American influence (even in non-Whorfian models) that
this automatically creates in the mindset of the English speaking elite,
points in the other direction. This is reinforced by the persisting dominance
of an antiquated British style curriculum. Some adjustments both to local
South Asian conditions and, simultaneously, to the emerging global village
certainly are in order. On the other hand, present autochthonously minded
efforts are the wrong way to follow. Fifty years after Indian independence,
it should not be regarded as a scholarly, but simply as a political undertaking
to 'rewrite' history for the purpose of national pride or 'nation building'.
We know to what such exercises have lead during the past century.
If the present wave of apologetic, revisionist, and nationalistic
writing should continue unabated, and if it should remain largely unobserved,
unstudied and unchecked by post-enlightenment scholarship, future historians
will look back at these excesses of the end of the 20th century and the
beginning 21st in the same way as some now like to do with regard to the
19th century. And they will criticize the present generation of scholars
for having looked the other way -- for whatever reasons.
It remains for us to hope[N.236] that the recent spate of revisionist,
autochthonous and chauvinistic writings will not lead to similar, real
life consequences as those that we have witnessed during the 20th century.

NOTES

* A first, shorter version of this paper was written in 1997 and
was to be published that year in a special issue of a science journal in
India; this has mysteriously not materialized and was in fact abandoned
in 1999; this paper has been constantly updated in light of recent indigenist
discussions; it has been revised now (Dec. 2000), especially in the linguistic
section, as H. Hock's discussion (1999) of "Out of India" scenarios
has relieved me of a detailed treatment of several such theories
(Misra 1992).

1 On this question see now Witzel 2000; see below § 9, end.
2 See, however, such early and clear statements against an "Aryan race"
as those by M. Mueller 1888, H. Hirt 1907: 6-7, Franz Boas
1910 [1966].
3 Confusingly, linguists sometimes use "Aryan" as a shortcut designation
of IIr. because both Iranians and Indo-Aryans call themselves and their
language arya/Arya (see below).
4 Staal 1983: I 683-6, with special reference to techniques of memorization;
Staal 1986, 1989.
5 Max Mueller had come to a similar chronology, but --long before the
prehistory and archaeological past of S.Asia was known at all-- one based
on internal evidence and some speculation, a fact he often underlined even
late in his career. This is nowadays misrepresented by the autochthonists,
especially Rajaram (1995), who accuses Mueller to have invented this chronology
to fit in with Bishop Usher's biblical calculations!
6 This date obviously depends on Archaeology. While dates for iron
had been creeping up over the last few decades, there is a recent re-evaluation
of the Iron Age, see Possehl 1999b, and Agrawal & Kharakwal (in
press). Apparently, the introduction of iron in India differs as per region
but is close to 1000 BCE. Occasional finds of meteoric iron and its use
of course predate that of regularly produced, smelted iron.
7 For indigenous dates which place the RV thousands of years earlier,
see below §11 sqq. Similarly, Talageri (2000, cf. below n. 84, 87,
140, 173, 175, 216) who purports to have based his historical analysis
of the RV only on the text itself, betrays a purANic mentality and inadvertently
introduces such traditional data (see below, and Witzel 2001). His analysis
is based on an inappropriate RV text, the late version compiled and redacted
by ZAkalya in the later brAhmaNa period. This includes various additions
and changes made by centuries of orthoepic diaskeuasis. Such a procedure
must lead to wrong results, according to the old computer adage: garbage
in, garbage out. In order to reach an understanding of the actual Rgvedic
period, one has to take as one's basis a secure text without additions,
as established by Oldenberg already in 1888. Talageri's 500 pp. book is
dealt with in detail elsewhere (Witzel 2001); it suffices to point out
this basic flaw here. (Interestingly, he quotes and approves, five
years later, my 1995 approach but proceeds to turn it on its head, using
the dubious methods detailed above, and below n. 40 etc.)
8 See below §18, on vas'ana [vaz'ana], -az- > e. The reasons for
the older forms in Mitanni IA seems to be that the Mitanni,
who had been in contact with speakers of pre-OIA before the RV, have preserved
these archaic forms.
9 Maximally, but unlikely, 1900 BCE, the time of the disintegration
of the Indus civilization. The exact date of IA influx and incursion is
still unsettled but must be pre-iron age (1200, or even 1000/900 BCE, see
Possehl and Gullapalli 1999).
10 For details, and for the transfer of Zoroastrianism into the Persis,
see K. Hoffmann 1992.
11 Elst 1999: 207, along with many other Indian writers, curiously
takes the asuras as real life enemies of the Vedic Aryans; he then turns
this conflict into one between the Iranian and Vedic peoples, with their
different kinds of worship, and makes the "Kashmir-based Anava (= Iranian)
people fight "against the paurava/Vedic heartland in sapta saindhavah";
consequently, he claims, the Iranians also changed the meaning of deva
'god' to daeuua 'demon'... (All these are outdated views that were prominent
around the turn of the 19th/20th century).
12 RV 1.25.20; cf. also RV 7.87.4, 7.66.8.
13 Generally, against its use, Zimmer (1990) and cf. Cowgill (1986:
66-68); but note its usefulness (§12.6), in the discussion of plants
and animals.
14 For many decades now, a discredited term which is too vague
to describe the great degree of variation among humans and not a valid
indicator of anthropological and genetic distinctions between various human
populations; see Cavalli-Sforza 1995.
15 Some writers are still confused by the racist terminology of the
'blond, blue-eyed Aryan'. As Cavalli-Sforza (1994) has shown, such physical
characteristics are local adaptations to a northern climate (e.g.,
prominent in the non-IE speaking Finns). Elst (1999: 230) strangely concludes
from such data that the home of IE "lay further to the southeast," [in
N. India] and that the Panjab "was already an area of first colonialization,
bringing people of a new and whiter physical type [= Panjabis] into
the expanding Aryan [= IE!] speech community which was originally darker".
pataJjali, mahAbhASya [2.2.6: 411:16 sqq.] with a reference to piGgala-
and kapila-keza 'golden/tawny haired' Brahmins is discussed as well. --
For those who still stress outward appearance ('race') it may be instructive
to look at the photos of a well known actor (turned from 'white' > 'black')
or a female of mixed "African-American and Native American" ancestry, who
after a little make up, convincingly appears as 'Caucasian', Black, East
Asian, etc. (Stringer and McKie 1996: 172-3).
16 Curiously, Elst 1999: 174 sq., elaborates on this well known fact
by stressing that the European Pre-Kurgan population has come from the
East, and considers it "one of the reasonable hypotheses" that they came
from India. Reasonable? India has always functioned --apart from
being a stepping stone the very early migration of Homo Sapiens from Africa
to (S.)E. Asia and Australia in c. 50,000-40,000 BCE-- as a cul de
sac.
17 Elst 1999: 209 discusses the designation of the 'Others' in the
RV as 'black' by simply pointing to the richness of metaphors in
Sanskrit. See rather Witzel 1995 and Hock 1999; Elst's discussion of varNa
(1999: 210) lacks the old IE aspect of attributing color to the three classes
(Puhvel 1987); he rather combines them with the much later Indian
concept of the colors of sattva, rajas, and tamas!
18 The point is merely mentioned here in passing as some writers still
use such characterizations frequently and as they attach importance
to such sentences as the preceding one from Kashmir which simply express
regional racism. Others, usually 'autochthonously' minded writers have
frequently attacked, preferably on the internet, my earlier statements
(1995) which were made precisely in the same spirit as the ones here. At
any rate, what kind of outward appearance would one expect from northwestern
immigrants? That of Bengalis or Tamils, or rather that of Afghanis?
19 The term a-nAs, which occurs just once in the Rgveda, was originally
translated as 'mouthless' by Grassmann etc. (see below, n. 230), but has
later on been understood by MacDonell-Keith etc. as 'noseless, snub-nosed';
see now Hock (1999) and cf. the speculations and elaborations of Elst (1999:
208).
20 He summarizes the results presented by Hemphill, Lukacs and Kennedy,
Biological adaptations and affinities of the Bronze Age Harappans, in:
Harappa Excavations 1986-1990, edited by R. Meadow; see now Kennedy 2000.
-- Apparently, the distinction is between early 2nd millennium skeleta
and samples from populations dated to after 800 BCE (late Bronze age and
early Iron age of Sarai Khola). Given the difference in time, this may
not mean much. Note also that the calibration of radiocarbon dates
in the Eighties was inconsistent, and that around 800 BCE the amount of
C14 in the atmosphere started dropping. Ordinary radiocarbon dates for
the period 800 - 400 BC, have highly unpredictable uncalibrated values.
A new investigation is in order. -- Similarly about the continuity of Indian
populations, Kenoyer (as quoted by Elst 1999: 236; -- Elst, however,
then lapses into an altogether inappropriate political discussion of what
Kenoyer might have thought, or not, about present Indian politics and the
BJP! It is a mystery why such political items constantly get introduced
into discussions of archaeological and literary facts).
21 This point, already mentioned in Witzel 1995, is deliberately(?)
misunderstood by indigenists and Out of India proponents (usually,
on the internet). It does not matter that the Huns' intrusion
was an actual invasion (and not a trickling in) by a group of horse riding
nomads: they left as little genetic imprint in the European subcontinent
as the immigrating IA bands and tribes did in the Indian subcontinent.
In so far, both types of incursions can be compared well, in spite of the
loud protests of the autochthonists who like to brand such statements as
'invasionist'; however, see below n. 23.
22 RV 10.16.14, etc. speaks of burial, cremation, exposing bodies
on trees and of 'throwing' dead bodies away.
23 While preliminary mtDNA data taken from present day populations
do not show much variation -- mtDNA is restricted to the (frequently more
sedentary) female lineage only -- there are indications already that the
study of the male-only Y chromosome will revolutionize our thinking. In
any immigration scenario, the Y chromosome obviously is of more interest.
The matter has been discussed at length at the Third Round Table on Ethnogenesis
of South and Central Asia at Harvard University, May 12-14, 2000, see:
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sanskrit/RoundTableSchedule.html. Just as in
Bamshad et al. (2001), there are clear indications of several incursions,
after c. 50,000 BCE, of bearers of different types of Y chromosome polymorphisms
from Western Asia, terminating in South Asia or proceeding further eastwards.
Several of them do not correspond to, and go beyond, the seven Principal
Components of Cavalli-Sforza et al. (1994: 135-8). The impact of immigrants,
however, can have been relatively minimal. See for example Cavalli-Sforza
about the immigrant Magyars (Hungarians). They now look just like their
neighbors, as these late, 9th cent. CE, horse riding invaders left only
a minimal trace in the larger Danubian gene pool (quoted by Elst 1999:
224, from an interview of Cavalli-Sforza in Le Nouvel Observateur
of 1/23/1992); see now Semino 2000: 1158 for lack of "Uralic genes" in
Hungary. Nevertheless, the Magyars, just like Indo-Aryan speakers, imposed
or transmitted, under certain social conditions, their language to the
local population, and the Magyars also retained their own religion until
they turned to the local religion, Christianity, around 1000 CE.
24 It is a fallacy to compare various Brahmin groups of India in order
to establish a common older type. Brahmins, just like other groups, have
intermarried with local people, otherwise how would some Newar Brahmins
have 'Mongoloid' characteristics, or how would Brahmins of various parts
of India have more in common with local populations than with their 'brethren',
e.g. in the northwest? Studies based on just one area and a few markers
only, such as E. Andhra (Bamshad 2001) do not help much (cf. also Elst
1999: 214, 217). Early acculturation processes (especially when following
the model of Ehret, 1988) may have resulted in the inclusion of
many local elements into the brAhmaNa class, cf. Kuiper 1955, 1991, 2000,
Witzel 1989, 1995, 1997, 1999a,b.
25 Note the difficulty of obtaining contemporary DNA materials due
to the (telling!) transition to cremation in the early post-Indus period
(Cemetery H at Harappa and in Cholistan).
26 Cf. Witzel 1995. Many of such data have been summed up and
cogently discussed by Kochhar 1999; however, not all of his results (e.g.
the restriction of the RV habitat to S. Afghanistan) can be sustained.
27 Actually, even this is, strictly speaking, not necessary. The constant
interaction of "Afghan" highlanders and Indus plain agriculturists could
have set off the process. A further opening was created when, after the
collapse of the Indus Civilization, many of its people moved eastwards,
thus leaving much of the Indus plains free for IA style cattle breeding.
A few agricultural communities (especially along the rivers) nevertheless
continued, something that the substrate agricultural vocabulary of the
RV clearly indicates (Kuiper 1991, Witzel 1999a,b). In an acculturation
scenario the actual (small) number of people (often used a 'clinching'
argument by autochthonists) that set off the wave of adaptations does not
matter: it is enough that the 'status kit' (Ehret) of the innovative
group (the pastoralist Indo-Aryans) was copied by some neighboring populations,
and then spread further. -- Hock (forthc.) seems to have misunderstood
me (1995: 322) when I mention transhumance movements. He thinks that this
weakens my case. On the contrary, such constant, repetitive movements strengthen
the case for close contact with the plains and eventual acculturation,
a fact well known from nomad studies elsewhere. (Note also the take-over
model: nomads, such as Arabs, Turks that were in close contact with sedentary
populations and who eventually usurped power in their host societies).
28 Others are more problematic. Elst (1999: 183) has the IA gods inda-bugash,
but this collocation is not listed in Balkan (1954). We find the maruts,
perhaps bhaga (as bugas'!).-- himalaya (Rajaram & Frawley 1997: 123)
is a phantom, as it refers to the Kassite female deity s'umaliya, see Balkan
(1954). Incidentally, note that [Kikkuli's] manual on horse training
in not at all "written in virtually pure Sanskrit" (Rajaram and Frawley
1997: 123). From what tertiary sources did they derive these innovative
insights? -- Curiously, Elst (1999: 184) lets the Kassites immigrate, without
any evidence (but probably following Rajaram & Frawley 1997: 124),
"from Sindh to S. Mesopotamia" as a "conquering aristocracy" in a "planned
invasion," after the "desiccation of the Sarasvati area in 2000 BCE." Actually,
the Kassite language is neither Indo-Aryan, nor Sumerian, Elamite, Akkadian
or Hurrite. It is belongs to altogether unknown language group; for details
see Balkan 1954.
29 For other areas of Eurasia; -- in the case of South Asia, however,
he thinks of elite dominance achieved through Indo-Aryan immigration.
30 See Hock, forthc. (lecture at the July 2000 meeting of the World
Association of Vedic Studies at Hoboken, NJ, kindly made available to me
by the author).
31 The Gypsies claim to be from Egypt or from Ur, that is biblical
S. Iraq, the Afghanis from Palestine (see below).
32 Necessarily, in the (north-)west. Who, in all seriousness, would
claim IA immigration via the difficult western Himalayan/Pamir trails or,
worse, from South of the Vindhyas? (The Vindhyas, incidentally, are
not even mentioned in Vedic literature). Immigration or large scale
movement by armies via the often difficult high passes of the Himalayas
has been extremely rare, and is attested apparently only in the case of
some Saka at the beginning of our era, of the Turkish adventurer Haidar
into Kashmir in the early 15th cent., of a Chinese army into
U.P. in the early 7th c. CE, called in to help Harsha's successor,
see n. 37. -- Individual Vedic passages, including those used in my 1995
paper -- in general, this is merely a first brief outline of method and
a first summary of a longer study to follow,-- certainly can be discussed
or challenged, which is always welcome. For one such case, see below n.
46. -- Hock (forthc.) has now challenged my interpretation (actually merely
an aside, in parentheses, Witzel 1995: 324) of another passage, RV 2.11.18,
where I took savyataH "on the left" as meaning 'north'. This statement
was based on a previous detailed study of the designations for the directions
of the sky (Witzel 1972) that was ignored by Hock (who, ironically, then
proceeds to tell readers virtually the same IE facts as given in more detail
in Witzel 1972). In that early paper, I pointed out cases where 'right'
= south, and where 'left' (savya, even uttara!) mean 'north' in IE languages.
In that sense, my apparently enigmatic statement: "Vedic poets faced the
east - their presumed goal -- in contemplating the world." Hock seems
to have misunderstood the passage: the "presumed goal" of course refers
to the immigration theory, "contemplation" to the Vedic (and IE)
world view. -- While this passage by no means is a proof for an eastward
immigration of the Indo-Aryans and certainly was not presented as one,
it fits in the general scheme of movement, for which I presented an initial
account and cumulative evidence in my 1995 paper. And that is why it was
quoted. In short, a lot ado about nothing. Of course, this singular sentence
(as discussed by Hock in his forthc. paper, at a conference) has again
be used to advantage by some fervent adversaries of the immigration theory,
as always on the internet, to "prove" that the immigration (their "invasion")
theory as such is wrong.
33 We cannot rely at all on a connection between rip- and the Rhipaen
(Ural) mountains, as mentioned by Bongard-Levin (quoted in Witzel 1995).
Since my casual reference to his paper has been repeatedly discussed (and
misinterpreted) on the internet (and by Talageri 2000: 96, 467, in 'psychological'
fashion!), I underline, again, that the similarity between Greek Rhip-
and Ved. rip- is accidental, and that RV rip- 'deceit'
has nothing to do with the Ural Mountains.
34 The sindhu = O.P. handu, Avest. h@Ndu, if with P. Thieme, from sidh
'to divide', does indeed divide not only the Vedic and Iranian territories,
but it also is the boundary (cf. Avest. zraiiah vourukaS~a) between the
settled world and the Beyond; however, in several Indian languages (incl.
Burushaski sinda, Werchikwar dial. sende < Shina : sin?) it simply seems
to indicate 'river', perhaps a secondary development. A. Hintze (1998)
has shown early take-over of IA geographical terms into Iranian; note also
that the mythical central mountain, us.h@Ndauua 'emerging from the river/ocean
[vourukaS~a]' (see Witzel 2000, 1984) presupposes an IIr word *sindhu 'boundary
of the inhabited world, big stream, ocean'.
35 Elst (1999: 206), neglecting or misrepresenting the linguistic arguments,
takes the dAsa/daha as "the Vedic people's white-skinned Iranians
cousins" (sic! ) while most of the dasyu, dAsa of the RV clearly are Indian
tribes of the Greater Panjab. Rather, he takes, against the Greek, Iranian
and Indian evidence quoted above, the specialized North Iranian (Khotanese)
meaning 'man' as the original meaning of the word.
36 Parpola 1988; cf. also Harmatta, in Dani 1992: 357-378, Re'dei 1986,
1988.
37 The little used Himalayan route of immigration is to be excluded
(only some Saka and medieval Turks are known to have used it). The RV does
not contain strong reminiscences of Xinjiang or W. Tibet, with the only
possible exclusion of the rasA RV 10.75, cf. however Staal 1990 (and
a forthc. paper). -- For the Afghani highland areas, see now Witzel 2000,
with references to some non-IA reminiscences in Avestan texts.
38 Elst (199: 167) brings up the indigenist contention of a 'sea-going'
sarasvatI -- for this see below §26 and n. 202, 206. Note, however:
while the Iranian haraxvaitI does not flow to the 'sea' but into a lake
or rather, series of lakes (the Hamun) -- Elst and others autochthonists
generally neglect the meaning of the word samudra in the Veda (see Klaus
1986)-- both rivers end in inland desert deltas of terminal
lakes (Hamun) viz. the sarasvatI inland delta near Ft. Derawar; see §25.
39 Elst (1999: 166) excoriates me for not supplying data of reminiscences
that are in fact well known (Parpola 1988, etc.) and that are actually
mentioned in Witzel 1995: 321, 103, 109 sq. -- In addition, he reverses
such data to make them fit an unlikely emigration of the Indo-Europeans
from India (see below). In the same context, Elst (1999: 168 sq.) misrepresents,
in a discussion of Staal's theories of the directions in the agnicayana,
the meaning of Indo-Iranian directions of the sky. Avestan paurva
(correctly, paouruua) does not mean 'south' (Elst) but 'east',
see Witzel 1972.
40 Elst (1999: 171) excoriates me for not noticing that Iranian connections
in the RV are restricted to the 'late' 8th maNDala and that are, in his
view, not found in the oldest parts of the RV. This is a fallacy: see above
on the rivers rasA, sarasvatI, sarayu, gomatI, sindhu and persons
such as the (half-mythical) mountain chieftain zambara who are prominent
in the old books 4-6. In this context, Elst brings up and relies on the
conclusions of Talageri (2000) whose "survey of the relative chronology
of all Rg-Vedic kings and poets has been based exclusively on the internal
textual evidence, and yields a completely consistent chronology" and whose
"main finding is that the geographical gradient of Vedic Aryan culture
in its Rg-vedic stage is from east to west..." This view is based on a
fallacy as well: Talageri, in spite of claiming to use only RV-internal
evidence, uses the post-Rgvedic anukramaNIs as the basis of his theory
and even surrepetitiously injects purANic notions (see § 7,
n.178, Witzel 2001).
41 See Witzel 1995. Individual passages can and should certainly be
discussed. However, Hock (forthc.) goes to far in denying any value to
allusions and descriptions referring to immigration as found in the RV:
against the background of strong linguistic and (so far, sporadic) archaeological
evidence, they serve as supporting materials and additional evidence; cf.
n. 26 sq., above.
42 They rely on *one* mistranslated statement in the purANas (see Witzel
2001, and below n. 86), composed and collected several thousand years
after the fact. On the unreliability of the purANic accounts see §19,
and Soehnen 1986.
43 Witzel 1979, 1986, Wezler 1996.
44 The Sandhi in gandhArayasparzavo is problematic. The MSS are corrupt
ansd differ very much from each other. However, parzu must be intended;
it is attested since RV 8.6.46, a book that has western (Iranian) leanings
(Witzel 1999), cf. OP pArsa 'Persian' < *pArsva < *pArc'ua. The Arattas
(with various spellings, AraTTa, arATTa), are a western people as well,
like the gandhAra and other 'outsiders' (bAhIka, ZB 1.7.8.3, Mbh 8.2030).
One may compare the old Mesopotamian name Aratta, indicating a distant
eastern country from where Lapis Lazuli is brought (Witzel 1980); it seems
to refer to Arachosia, which is just north of the Chagai Hills that
produce Lapis (just as the more famous Badakhshan, north of the Hindukush);
see now Possehl 1996b and P. Steinkeller 1998. -- Elst 1999: 184 wants
to understand this ancient Sumerian term as a prAkRt word, from a-rASTra,
again inventing an early prAkRt before 2000 BCE, which simply is linguistically
impossible (see n.167, on Mitanni satta) and which also does not
fit the non-IIr. linguistic picture of 3rd millennium Greater Iran (see
§ 17).
45 Alternatively, echoing the first sentence: "amAvasu (went) westwards."
See discussion in the next note.
46 This passage, quoted in an earlier publications (1989, excerpted
and --unfortunately-- simply computer-copied in 1995), was not correctly
translated as printed in 1989/1995. It has elicited lively, if not emotive
and abusive internet discussions, even alleging "fabrication of evidence"
(see also Elst 1999: 164, who misattributes to me "the desire to counter
the increasing skepticism regarding the Aryan invasion theory", as reason
for writing my paper), -- all of this in spite of repeated on-line
clarifications over the years and of general apologies (Witzel 1997: 262
n.21). -- Retrospectively, I should have printed the full explanation in
that footnote, but I was sure then that I could do so in the earlier
version of this very paper, slated for print in 1997).
What had occurred was that I had unfortunately misplaced a parenthesis
in the original publication of 1989 devoted not to the Aryan migration
but to OIA dialects (and simply copied in my 1995 paper, a short summary
of RV history), -- i.e. I printed: "(His other people) stayed at home in
the West" instead of: (His other people stayed) at home in
the West", or better "amAvasu (stayed at home) in the West." In this way
I had unfortunately intermingled translation and interpretation in these
two summary style papers, without any further discussion, -- which set
me up for such on-line criticisms as that of recent adversaries who
deduce (e.g., amusingly, in the Indian right wing journal, The Organiser)
that I do not even know the rudiments of pANinean grammar. (Of course,
I teach, in first year Sanskrit, the past tense of amA + vas as amAvasan,
not amAvasuH, a 'mistake' some critics rhetorically accuse me of, in spite
of hundreds of correct translations of such past tenses!) Or, worse, they
accuse me of "fabricating evidence" for the invasion theory.
However, the passage plays, in the usual brAhmaNa style, with these
names and their nirukta-like interpretations and etymologies. They are
based (apart from Ayu : AyuS 'full life span'), on the names of the two
sons of purUravas, amAvasyu : amA vas 'to dwell at home', as opposed to
Ayu : ay/i 'to go', contrasting the 'stay home' peoples in
the west (AmAvasyavaH: gandhAra, parzu, arATTa) with those (AyavaH: kuru-paJcAla,
kAzi-videha) who went /went forth (ay/i + pra vraj) eastwards, as the text
clearly says. --
A note of caution may be added: The missing verb in the collocation
pratyaG amAvasus allows, of course, suppletion of pravavrAja. If one follows
that line of argument, one group (the AyavaH) 'went east', the other
one (the AmAvasyavaH) 'went west', both from an unknown central area, to
the west of the kuru lands. The kurukSetra area is excluded as the kurus
went eastwards (i.e. toward it!), apparently from somewhere in the Panjab,
(e.g., from the paruSNI, the place of the Ten Kings' Battle, RV 7.18).
While the syntax may speak for the second possibility, the inherent
etymological and stylistic possibilities render both interpretations given
above somewhat ambiguous. -- [NB. See addendum in EJVS 7-4, at
the end of this file!] Whatever interpretation one chooses, this evidence
for movements inside the subcontinent (or from its northeastern borders,
in Afghanistan) changes little about the bulk of evidence assembled from
linguistics and from the RV itself that points to an outside origin of
Vedic Sanskrit and its initial speakers. In other words, the weight given
by some the internet to their point that a different interpretation of
this passage would remove (all) evidence for an immigration/trickling in
of speakers of Indo-Aryan is, at a minimum overblown, and in fact just
a rhetorical ploy. This passage is of course just one, and a late one at
that, speaking of tribal movements. Therefore, Elst's overblown summary
(1999: 165) "The fact that a world-class specialist has to content himself
with a late text... and that has to twist its meaning this much in order
to get an invasionist story out of it..." is just rhetorics. The passage
in question is just one point in the whole scheme of immigration and acculturation,
a fact that Elst does not take into account here. ---
The gandhAri clearly are located in E. Afghanistan/N. Pakistan, the
parzu in Afghanistan and the arATTa seem to represent the Arachosians (cf.
Witzel 1980); note the Mesopot. Aratta, the land of Lapis Lazuli (cf. Possehl
1996b, Steinkeller 1998).
47 The parzu and arATTa are not known to be orthoprax, the gandhAri
may be so, if we apply upaniSadic notices, such as BAU 3.3., cf. Witzel
1987.
48 The adoption of the eastern tribes (puNDra etc.) legend by
vizvAmitra in the zunaHzepa legend (AB 7.13 sqq.) clearly reflects this
policy. The AraTTa (BZS 18.13) appear next to other peoples outside the
Kuru orthoprax orbit: gAndhAra, sauvIra, karaskara, kaliGga; some of these
and others in eastern and southern India are still regarded as 'outsiders'
in late Vedic texts (AB 7.18); for earlier 'outsiders' such as the balhika,
kAzi, aGga see AV 5.22, PS 12.1-2. and not the constant criticism of the
"Panjabis", from the brAhmaNa texts onwards.
49 An emigration westwards, as imagined by Out of India proponents,
is excluded by a variety of arguments, discussed below, see §12.2
sqq.
50 Curiously, Elst (1999: 172), after constantly propagating Out of
India theories, makes a half-hearted turn: "perhaps such an invasion from
a non-Indian homeland into India took place at a much earlier date, so
that is was forgotten by the time of the composition of the Rg-Veda."
When should Elst's hypothetical immigration have taken place, at the time
of the African Exodus, 50,000 BCE? Or with the arrival of wheat in the
last 10,000 years, from the Near East (Ved. godhUma < gant-uma <
N. Eastern **xand ?
51 In Vedic this would be: arya, tura/tUra, *zarima, *z(y)ena, dAsa.
52 Leaving aside various incorrect details (e.g., 'writing'
of the gAthAs by Zoroaster; angra mainiiu < aGgiras!), Elst's (and also
Talageri's) identification of airiiana,m vaEjah as Kashmir is entirely
gratuitous (Witzel 2000). -- Elst (1999: 196) even makes the Croats (Hrvat)
descend from the Iranian haraxvaitI (a feature now often repeated on the
internet), while it is a well known fact of IE linguistics that Slavic
retains IE s (but, Iran. harah < IIr saras < IE
*seles). Of course, nothing is ever heard of a movement of the Arachosians
towards Croatia... (and there are no connections with the Alans, who moved
westwards from the steppes with the Vandals). -- Elst generally assumes,
with Talageri, an emigration of the Iranians ("Anava") from Kashmir into
the Punjab and hence to Iran, just because the vIdEvdAd mentions the hapta
h@Ndu lands; he conveniently neglects that according to this text,
the Panjab is one of the least desirable lands (15th out 16, being "too
hot", see Witzel 2000). Hock (forthc.) discusses these assumptions of Elst
and his predecessors (Talageri, Bhargava) in some detail, and states, correctly,
that the vIdevdAd cannot be used to show an emigration Out of India (Elst's
"obviously Kashmir"). However, Hock proceeds to use the text as a possible
testimony for an immigration into India, including the old but wrong assertion
that airiiana,m vaEjah could be Choresmia. This entirely overlooks the
ancient Indian and Iranian schemes of organization of territories
(summed up in Witzel 2000). The text simply has an anti-clockwise description
of the (east) Iranian (airiia) lands.
53 This calque was formed on the basis of the old Indo-European stem
-tu which then became fossile (-tvI, tum, tave, etc.), see Kuiper 1967.
54 The RV is, by and large, a composition of poets of the pUru and
bharata, and not of some earlier IA tribes already living in the
Panjab (Witzel 1995). -- Such types of linguistic relationship are, of
course, different from a genetic relationship that some adherents of the
autochthonous theory suppose (see below). Cf. also Deshpande's essay on
Sanskrit in his saMskRtasubodhinI.
55 Rajaram 1995: 219 "unproven conjectures", and similar statements.
He regards comparative linguistics as 'unscientific', -- strange, for a
science that can make predictions! Yet, Rajaram is a scientist, an engineer
and mathematician by training.
56 Surprisingly, Talageri (1993: 205) finds that "the overwhelming
majority of Sanskrit names for Indian plants and animals are derived
from Sanskrit and Indo-European (Bryant 1999: 74), even such structurally
unfit words as aTavi, kapi, bIja etc. (see discussion below). Even
a brief look into KEWA, EWA (Mayrhofer's "unclear" etc.) would have
convinced him of the opposite -- but he simply does not use such
basic handbooks. In addition, he regards linguistic arguments as 'hairsplitting'
(2000: 248, 299), or as 'a linguistic ploy'.
57 Especially when the underlying language is not one of the known
ones -- IA, Proto-Drav., Proto-Munda, Proto-Burushaski, etc. but one of
the unknown Gangetic languages (such as Masica's "Language X", see
Masica 1979) or my own proposal for the Panjab-based prefixing Para-Munda
language (Witzel 1999 a,b); cf. Bryant 1999: 73.
58 In the heavily Anglicized Massachusetts area, for example, one does
not need to know the local native American language to notice that place
names such as Massatoit, Massachusetts, Wachusetts, Montachusetts, Cohasset,
Neponset, Mattapoisett, Mattapan, Mashpee, Chicopee, Nantucket, Pawtucket
are related and without English etymology.
59 The problem is entirely misunderstood by those (quoted by
Bryant 1999: 72) who merely delight in pointing out the differences
in etymological proposals by IE, Drav., or Munda proponents. That does
not discredit the linguistic (or even the etymological) method, as these
branches of linguistics are not yet as developed as IE/IA. Even when
the linguistic method will have been refined in the non-IA languages of
S. Asia, there always will be some difference in opinion in those cases
that actually allow multiple interpretation, that is after one has applied
the structural rules of IA/IE, Drav., Munda, described below; for
details see Witzel forthc. b).
60 With the exception of the onomatopoetic *kik in 'magpie', Skt. kiki-
in kikidIvi (EWA I 349); *mag/meg does not exist in IE.
61 C = consonant, M = voiced/mediae, T = unvoiced/tenues, R =
resonants = y/w/r/l; not allowed are the types RCe- or Rse- (Skt.
*Rka, *usa, etc.), and the types: *bed, *bhet, *tebh, *pep, *teurk/tekt
(Skt. *bad, bhat, tabh, tork). See Mayrhofer 1986: 95, Szemere'nyi
1970: 90 sqq.
62 In short: (S) (T) (R) e (R) (T/S) where T = all occlusives, R =
resonant; forbidden are: M - M (*bed), M - T (*bhet), T - M (*tebh), same
occl. in one root, such as: no *pep (exc. *ses), final 2 occl. or
final 2 sonants, no: *tewrk, *tekt; - but s-Teigh etc. are allowed.
-- In spite of these rules, it does not mean that IA etymologies
have not been attempted, see KEWA, EWA, often working with supposed Prakritisms,
as in the improbable case of maganda < mRgAda 'deer eater'.
63 This should eliminate the doubt of those indigenists (cf. Bryant
1999: 80) who simply reject the notion of an unknown language or language
family as source for the local loan words, language(s) that have subsequently
been lost. After all, Sumerian, Elamite, Etruscan etc. belong to such isolated
language families and these language(s) (families) have disappeared without
descendants. Such deliberations, however, do not deter linguistic amateurs
such as Talageri (1993: 200) who speaks of "a twilight zone of purely hypothetical
non-existent languages." How many languages disappear in India per decade
now? Including Nahali, fairly close to Talageri's home. They all
will be pretty "hypothetical" in a decade or so unless they are recorded
now (see Mother Tongue II-III, 1996-97): a useful, but largely neglected
field of study by those who engage in endless AIT/OIT discussions, and
could do useful work in the linguistic/cultural history of India instead.
Especially, as 'tribals' have been and to some extent still are off limits
for non-Indian researchers.
64 Cf. the discussion by Bryant 1999: 75. It is precisely these local
words that are of importance if the Indo-Aryans would have been autochthonous
to the Greater Panjab. But, such plants and animal names are 'foreign',
non-IE/IA (see Witzel 1999a,b). -- It is quite different problem (Bryant
1999: 76) that many plant names in IE do not have a clear etymon. Bryant
overlooks that they are IE, IA in structure and as such, inherited
from PIE into IA. Worse, Talageri simply does not understand how a language
develops over time, from pre-PIE to PIE to IIr, to IA (1993: 206) when
he thinks that such words simply were colloquial or slang words. That,
of course, fits nicely with his view that 'rare' words in Skt. may have
a colloquial origins as well. All remain within the fold!
65 Details in Witzel 1999a, cf. Bryant 1999: 78. Significantly, there
is a cluster of non-IA names in eastern Panjab and Haryana (including
the local name of the sarasvatI, vi<s'am>bal/z'!), where the successor
cultures of the Indus Civilization continued for a long time.
66 Bryant's proposal (1999: 77) that the non-IE loanwords in
Iranian must come from the Proto-IIr that was spoken in Eastern Iran before
the Iranians moved in cannot be substantiated. The individual P-Iran. and
P-IA forms of such loans often differ from each other (Witzel 1999a,
b, Lubotsky, forthc.) which is typical for repeated loans from a third
source. However, he thinks that there are no local loan words in Iranian
from the pre-IE languages; nevertheless see Witzel 1999a,b.
67 Similarly, the Huns in India are only known from historical records
and from the survival of their name as (hara-)hUNa in the MahAbhArata or
hUN in some Rajasthani clans.
68One may also think of part of the assemblage of the Cemetery H culture
of the Panjab (see above, n. 25).
69 J. Lukacs asserts unequivocally that no significant population changes
took place in the centuries prior to 800 BC; see now Kennedy 1995,
2000.
70 Talageri, though mentioning --unlike other OIT advocates--
the value of linguistics (2000: 415), merely lists some words and
compares them as look-alikes, in nirukta fashion. Data are listed and discussed
without any apparent linguistic background and with lack of any critical,
linguistic faculty. Elst is better prepared philologically and linguistically,
yet still lacks linguistic sophistication; his linguistic evaluation (1999:
118 sqq, 137) is lacuneous and misses much of what is discussed in this
paper; this lack is substituted for by a lot of gratuitous speculation
of when and how the hypothetical Indian Indo-Europeans could have emigrated
from India.
71 No doubt due to his complete (self-imposed?) scholarly isolation
at Benares. His (lone?) trip to an international meeting in Dushanbe, duly
noted in his introduction his 1992 book, provided him with some contacts,
-- unfortunately not the best ones, see his rather uncritical use of
Harmatta's materials (below §12.2, n.97).
72 Bryant (1999) reports that he found, already in 1994-5,
that a majority of Indian scholars "had rejected the Aryan invasion/migration
completely, or were open to reconsider it."
73 For one such case see below, n. 235. -- The opposite is seen
in deriving Skt. from Arabic in a book published in Pakistan: Mazhar 1982.
74 The list of such internet and printed publications waxes greatly,
by the month. There now exists a closely knit, self-adulatory group, members
of which often write conjointly and/or copy from each other. Quite boringly,
they also churn out long identical passages, in book after book, sometimes
paragraph by paragraph, all copied in cottage industry fashion from earlier
books and papers; the whole scene has become one virtually indistinguishable
hotchpotch. A 'canonical' list would include, among others: Choudhury
1993, Elst 1999, Danino 1996, Feuerstein, Kak, and Frawley
1995, Frawley 1994, Kak 1994, Klostermaier (in Rajaram and Frawley 1997),
Misra 1992, Rajaram 1993, 1995, Rajaram and Frawley 1995, 1997, Rajaram
and Jha 2000, Sethna 1980, 1981, 1989, 1992, Talageri 1993, 2000. Among
them, Choudhury stands somewhat apart by his extreme chauvinism. -- These
and many others frequent the internet with letters and statements ranging
from scholarly opinions and prepublications to inane accusations and blatant
politics and hate speech; such ephemeral 'sources' are not listed here;
I have, however, been collecting them as they will form interesting source
material for a study of the landscape of (expatriate) Indian mind of the
late 20th and early 21st centuries.
75 For place names see also Szemere'nyi (1970), and Vennemann 1994,
and the new (IA) substrate theories in Lubotsky (forthc.).
76 The recent denigration of this shift by some OIT-ers such
as Elst is entirely disingenuous; he insists on calling any migration or
'trickling in' an "invasion". However, immigration / trickling in and acculturation
(which works both ways, from newcomer to indigenous, and from indigenous
to newcomer!) is something entirely different from a (military) invasion,
or from overpowering and/or from eradicating the local population. -- Incidentally,
I have it on good oral authority that the idea of Indra destroying the
'fortification walls' of the Indus towns was created by V.S. Agrawal who
served as cicerone in Wheeler's time, and that Wheeler merely overheard
him and simply picked up the idea.
77 To mention a personal experience: when I related some of the materials
that went into this paper to a well-known scholar of the older generation
some three years ago (that is, someone who has considerably advanced our
understanding of the Indo-Iranian and IA question) this scholar was simply
unaware of the present discussion, and in fact, could not believe
what he heard.
78 Elst, though not without philological and linguistic training (Ph.D.
Leuven, Belgium), is quite lacuneous in his interpretations and does not
discuss the fine linguistic details, see below and n. 70. In his "Update"
(Elst 1999), he delights in speculating about an Indian Urheimat of IE
and a subsequent emigration, with 'Indian' invasions of Europe, all while
neglecting that linguistic data speak against it, see Hock 1999 and §12.3
sqq.
79 Though Talageri (2000) even refuses the link of Vedic with Iranian.
80 Note for example, in the present context, the discussion among scientists
about the various palaeo-channels of the sarasvatI (Sarsuti-Ghaggar-Hakra),
in Radhakrishnan and Merh (1999), or the first appearance of
the horse in South Asia (Meadow 1998).
81 Such absolute skepticism, though, is always welcome as a hermeneutic
tool; but, it has to be relativized: one may maintain that linguistic palaeontology
does not work (S. Zimmer 1990), but how is it that IE words for plants
and animals consistently point to a temperate climate and to a time frame
before the use of iron, chariots, etc.? The few apparent inconsistencies
can be explained (e.g., doubtful etymologies for the 'elephant', etc. see
below n.127, 149).
82 It might be summed up as follows. If his rules were correct, we
would expect Skt. azva 'horse' to correspond to Latin equu-s, but then
how could ka 'who' to correspond to Latin qui-s? How could z as well as
k turn into Latin qu (and how does the -u- come about)? Skt. k usually
corresponds to c [k] in Latin, as in kalaza, Lat. calix; kaJcate, L. cingO;
kRNatti, cf. L. cratis, crassus; kavi, L. caveO; kUpa, L. cUpa; kupyati,
L. cupiO; kakSA, L. coxa; kraviS, L. cruor, etc. On the other
hand, Skt. z corresponds to a palatal k' which also appears as c [k] in
Latin. How would the early Latin speakers have 'decided' which sound to
'choose'? --- Again, if IE *a > e, o, a, how could the early
Latin speakers 'decide' to turn the initial a- and final a of azva into
e- and -u respectively? Worse, if Skt. agni 'fire' corresponds to Latin
igni-s, why does a turn to i? Or how can Skt. avRtta-/ajJAta correspond
to Latin invert-/ ignotu-? Misra has not explained such cases and has provided
only some ad hoc rules to show the closeness of IE and Skt. -- However,
all these developments have been explained by IE linguistics, for more
than a century, in a coherent way (IE = Latin e, o, a > Skt. a; IE
> vowel n > Skt. a, Lat. in, etc. ).
83 Archaeologists have proposed as area of the domestication of the
horse and the (later) development of the horse drawn chariot, in the Ukraine
and the plains west and east of the Urals. From there, a trail of evidence
leads to Pirak (c. 1700 BC), the Swat valley (c. 1400 BC), -- and,
of course, to the RV (textual evidence, see §8).
84 The unspoken "principle" of locating the (IE) homeland: "the homeland
is at, or close to the homeland of the author of the book in question..."
(Witzel, 2000). -- Talageri claims to have based his study of the
RV only on RV materials, but introduces late Vedic and purANic concepts
(see below §12.2, Witzel 2001); not surprisingly, then, the
outcome is a Gangetic homeland.
85 Elst 1999: 159 sq. stresses, like many other indigenists, that "India
was the best place on earth for food production" and that "a generous
country like India must have had a large population," both unsubstantiated
articles of faith. Note that the Indus Valley has only gradually been settled,
from the Baluchi/Afghani hills, and that the Gangetic plain remained
very sparsely settled for much longer. (Cf. also the negative description
of the Panjab by E. Iranians, in vIdEvdAd, see n. 52). Elst's imaginative
description is compounded by repeating the nationalistic view that "the
ancient Hindus colonized the world". But India, by and large, always has
been a cul de sac. Otherwise, autochthonists wonder why a 'large population'
could take over IA language(s) brought in by a few tribes. A few comparisons
across history would have provided many and diverse examples. For the dominance
model: Norman French introduced by a few knights and their followers in
Anglo-Saxon England, or for a trade language: Swahili, starting out from
the coast and by now covering most of E. Africa and the eastern half of
the Congo (incidentally, mostly spreading without Islamization).
86 It must be pointed out that all of this is based on one misrepresented
passage from several purANas, given by Talageri 1993: 368 and 2000: 260
sq., typically, twice in untranslated form, which makes it easy to impute
any meaning desired, in case a "first historical emigration ... of the
Druhyu into the areas to the north of Afghanistan (ie. into Central Asia
and beyond)." The passage is found with some variants, at BrahmANda 2.74.11,
Brahma 13.152, HarivaMza 1841, Matsya 48.9, VAyu 99.11, cf. also ViSNu
4.17.5, BhAgavata 9.23.15, see Kirfel 1927: 522: PracetasaH putrazataM
rAjAnaH sarva eva te // mleccharASTrAdhipAH sarve udIcIm dizam AzritAH,
which means, of course, not that these '100' kings conquered the 'northern
countries' way beyond the Hindukush or Himalayas, but that all these 100
kings, sons of pracetAs (a descendant of a 'druhyu'), kings of mleccha
kingdoms, are 'adjacent' (Azrita) to the 'northern direction,' -- which
since the Vedas and pANini has signified Greater gandhAra. -- Elst (1999:
122) even weaves in the disputed Bangani evidence (Witzel 1999 a,b) that
point to a western (centum) IE remnant in the Himachal Pradesh Hills, like
that of Tocharian in Xinjiang, W. China.
87 Talageri achieves such evidence by twisting the facts his way:
see the discussion of Jahnùv*, n. 90, Witzel 2001.
88 sarayu, then was not yet the mod. Sarju in U.P.; gomatI,
that in PB 25.7.2 is already located in vibhinduka land, i.e. is the modern
Gumti in U.P., Witzel 1987:193.
89 RV 5.53.9, the mythical river at the end of the world or high up
in the Himalayas, the rasA /Avest. ranghA, and the kubhA (Kabul R.), krumu
(Kurram), sarayu (Herat R.); and 10.64.9: sarasvatI (=haraxvaitI, Helmand),
sarayu (Herat R.), sindhu (Indus); (see Witzel 1987, 1995, 1999; note that
both lists are probably ordered anti-clockwise, Witzel, 2000).
90 Note Mbh 1.3722 etc., son of ajamIDha, his daughter = gaGgA; --
jAhnAvI Mbh 3.8211; jAhnava PB 22.12; cf. jahnu's descendants at AB 7.18,
AzvZS 12.14, = 'gaGgA' at BhGItA 10.31, ViSNu Pur. 398; cf. Macdonell-Keith,
Vedic Index.
91 Note that the center of settlement in RV 3 is the eastern Panjab
and the sarasvatI area of Haryana, see Witzel 1995: 320.
92 For example, settlement in Kashmir by any Rgvedic tribe is very
doubtful, see Witzel 1994; in the later brAhmaNa period, uttara-madra (however,
not uttara-kuru) may refer to Kashmir .
93 Witzel 1987,1989, 1997. However, the "north", gandhAra and uttara-madra,
(uttara-kuru?) are always excluded, see Witzel 1989: 101.
94 See discussion in §9, nirukta, pataJjali and the kamboja language.
95 But see above §9 on the sarasvatI as political center in sudAs'
time.
96 The following account was written before I heard, at the beginning
of Oct. 2000, of the author's demise. I am sorry that he can no longer
reply to the following points. However, as his book has been quoted in
virtually every publication propagating the autochthonous point of view,
it is important to point out the facts which remain, even if
de mortuis nihil nisi bene.
97 Reprinted in Harmatta 1992: 360-367. Harmatta actually is an historian
who, nevertheless, is called by Misra "one of the leading Indo-Europeanists."
His paper has been used by many indigenists who cannot judge these linguistic
materials.
98 Misra, of course, denies the development IE e, o, a > IIr, Ved.
a; this reversal to early 19th cent. linguistics is refuted by Hock
1999.
99 Harmatta's list has no clear examples that date back to PIE. One
may discuss PFU *mete 'honey' < PIE *medhu, but the quality of the PFU
vowels preserved in these words is open to doubt (see below). Further,
the retaining of -w- in PFU *arwa 'present given to a guest' surprises
as PIE *orgwha- should have lost its labiovelar quality already by
the time the word turned into IIr *argha. Note, however, that Mayrhofer,
EWA 114, regards the PFU form as problematic (from *arg'a?, Finn. arvo);
Katz's Habilschrift was not available to me.
100 Parpola 1998, however, conflates the two stages and further conflates
them with the representation of IE e/o/a by FU e, o, a, ae etc.
101 These facts should be counterchecked by FU specialists who
may be able to explain this phenomenon by vowel harmony or by the peculiarities
of PFU stress.
102 Conversely, there is apparently little FU in IE. Such one-sided
relationships, however, are not uncommon as they follow the predominant
cultural flow. The reason for the early occurrence of word for bee (*meks'e)
and honey (IE *medhu) may lie elsewhere, in the usefulness of bee's wax
to produce cire perdue metal products, which seem to be earlier in the
Taiga woodlands than in the steppes and even further south. In other words,
we here have a reverse cultural flow, from the woodlands into the steppes.
-- It must be pointed out that the few words in PFU that still retain the
nom. sg. masc. -s, such as tarwas, martas, taivas, porc'as, werkas (and,
including the case of pakas 'god', with a typical, much later, Iran. semantic
development from IIr Bhaga-s, the (god) "Share", see below) do not point
to an earlier take-over than that of other words without -s. For, there
are words such as the presumably very early *arwa 'present', *jewae,
or *meks'e, where this has not taken place. -- However, the typical Iran.
change s > h is not yet seen in Harmatta's material, and it may indeed
be fairly late (c. 1000 BCE, see A. Hintze 1998). In short, some of the
late words in the list may be of North Iranian (Scythian/Saka) origin.
-- For connections between IE and Altaic, see A. Rona-Tas 1988.
103 This is not to say that even the RV has a few forms, such as the
-disputed- jyotiS < dyotiS (aan de Wiel 2000); however Mitanni does
not have any such developments, see below (§18).
104 Some other topics of this nature will be taken up below (§13
sqq.) The following passage, however, does not need any comment:
"In ancient times in India such RSis were very powerful. They were
great teachers, researchers, philosophers and scientists. If agastya had
some power he might have helped in bringing down the abnormal height of
the vindhya mountains which created a lack of contact of North and South.
Thus a least this is much likely that due to some factor the height of
the vindhya mountains became abnormally high, so that the path for contact
of North and South was blocked and due to the growth of population the
people in the North had to spread, naturally farther North. They used the
routes like the Khyber pass and left it and lost all contact and were finally
lost to their people ... as a result the Aryans had to go outside to North-West
through the Himalayan passes and this consequently was responsible for
the spread of Indo-European language family to the outside world." (Misra
1992: 70) Is this linguistics, prehistory, a 'scientific' mahA-bhArata?
Or just a reverse version of O. Rosenberg's Myth of the Twentieth Century?
105 The same applies to Austronesian, with a very close grouping in
Taiwan (and then in S.E. Asia), but subsequently, with the wider spread
of just one subfamily, Polynesian, all across the Pacific. -- The
center of Slavic languages would be in or near the northern Carpathian
mountains, indeed close to the actual homeland of the Slavic speaking tribes.
That of all Romance languages would lead to central Italy, in other words,
to Rome. -- Elst 1999: 126 sq. points, as 'proof' for his Indian Urheimat
of IE, to some asymmetric expansions which are found as well, as in the
(easily explainable) case of Australia, with Arnhemland as the center and
with the rest of the continent as the area of a more recent expansion.
106 Elst (1999) includes a long chapter on links of IE with other language
families, with a curious mixture of correct and incorrect data; wrong are,
e.g., p. 141: Ved. parazu 'axe' is not the same as Mesop. pilakku
'spindle' (see EWA II: 87); on p. 145 there is the linguistically
surprising statement that, because Drav. and Munda are attested later than
Vedic, there is no reason to assume a borrowing from these languages into
Vedic, -- as if they did not have Proto-forms. -- Elst pays special attention
to links with Austronesian (p. 152 sqq.) as this would push the Urheimat
of IE into S. Asia, or even into S. China and S.E. Asia; this is
followed by a curious speculation of a Manu who would have led the Indo-Europeans
upstream on the Ganges towards the Panjab, ending with (p. 157) "India
as a major demographic growth centre from which IE spread to the north
and west and Austronesian to the southeast as far as Polynesia". The only
redeeming feature here is that he concludes (p. 158) "it is too early to
say that linguistics has proven an Indian origin for the IE family."
107 Aurobindo felt that not only the people but also the original connection
between the Sanskrit and Tamil tongues to be far closer and more extensive
than is usually supposed and that they may have been two divergent families
derived from one "lost primitive tongue".
108 Nostratic, or Greenberg's just off the press Eur-Asiatic, are another
matter, but even these new theories still do not turn Drav. and IE into
Meso-/Neolithic neighbors inside India.
109 However, Iranian has some pre-RV features, while it misses all
Indian innovations, all of which makes a late emigration impossible, see
§17.
110 Which, pace Misra, point to loans made during the Indo-Iranian
and Iranian periods, not in the Vedic period, see above.
111 In fact, most of the autochthonists have not even started to learn
the linguistic 'trade', and simply reject linguistics out of hand, as mentioned
above.
112 Note that the following list can be read both in the new, autochthonous/indigenous
way, that is of leaving India, or in the 'traditional' IE way, of leaving
a S.E. European/C. Asian homeland.
113 Only the birch tree is found all the way from India to Europe:
bhUrja 'betula utilis' (KS+); note that the Indian birch differs slightly
from the European one. We have: Iran. Pamir dial. furz, Shugni vAwzn <
*barznI; Osset. boers(oe); Lith. be'rz'as, Serbo-Croat. bre`za;
German Birke, Engl. birch, etc.
114 The fir tree is found as Grk. pi'tus, Lat. pInus <*pItsn-, Skt.
pI'tu-dAru KS+ 'a fir, Pinus deodora' (pUtu'dru AV, pU'tudru TS+,
pUtudAru KauzS), Dardic *pItsa? 'fir' CDIAL 8236, EWA II 137. Note
also the word for 'resin' which is closely related to trees such as the
fir: Lat. bitUmen, OHG quit 'glue', Ved. (sUtras) ja'tu 'lac, rubber',
N.Pers., z'Ad 'rubber', Pashto z'As'wla 'resin' < IE *gwetu, EWA
I 565.
115 Breton. gwern 'alder', Alban. ver@ 'Populus alba', Armen. geran
'plank, board', varaNa 'Crataeva Roxburghii'; "unclear" EWA II 513; --
note also Thieme (1954: 16) sphya 'belonging to the asp tree', but
cf. Pokorny 1959: 55, EWA II 779.
116 The Kashmir Valley now has: deodar (Cedrus deodara), pine (yar,
Pinus excelsa and chIl, Pinus longifolia), fir, yew (Taxus
baccata), elm, cypress, plane tree (Platanus orientalis), poplar, lime
tree, wild chestnut, willow, maple, hawthorn, many fruit trees, and at
high altitudes: birch, alder, juniper and rhododendron. -- Note that none
of the local words for these plants, except for the birch, exists west
of the subcontinent, or in autochthonous parlance, was 'exported' westwards.
117 Skt. parjanya, Lith. perku'nas, O. Slav. perunu, etc.
118 Avest. vaEti, OHG wIda, Grk. ite'a, Lat. vitex, Lith. z'il-vitis;
cf. also: OHG felawa 'willow', Grk. heli'kE, Ossetic faerw,
farwe 'alder'.
119 See above for 'aspen'.
120 As for the distribution of the word, see Bartholomae 1898, Henning
1963, Lane 1967, summary by Cowgill 1986: 86 sq. Note the famous
Greek adaptation of the word used for temperate climate tree, the
'beech' > the mediterranean Grk. phEgo's 'oak'; while Lat. fagus
'beech', Germ. Buche, OHG buohha > Slav. buky, and the Bukovina region
retain the older meaning; contrast Russ. bozu 'elder tree', Alban.
bunge, Gr. phEgo's > 'oak', and note that Kurd. bUz 'elm' <
*wyg 'elm' is not derived from the 'beech' word. The word for 'beech' is
not found in S.Asia, though the tree itself was historically found much
further east during the Atlanticum than Thieme thought (1954: 16), that
is further east than the famous 'beech line' (running from Koenigsberg
to Odessa). Elst (1999: 130), while not mentioning the climatic factors,
disposes of the beech argument wholesale.
121 The only exception from this evidence are certain later cultural
loans, plants such as 'cotton' or 'mustard.'
122 Differently, Oettinger, Habilschrift 1985 (unpubl.).
123 For Elst (1999: 130,132) this is not a problem as he lets the IE
first settle in India and name the mongoose a 'brown one.' Then, when emigrating
westward, each IE language would mysteriously have transferred this designation
individually to the beaver, and always in the later, post-PIE form, as
per individual subfamily or language in question. Occam applies. Derivation
of the 'beaver' words from Skt. babhru is of course linguistically impossible.
124 Bartholomae, Indogermanische Forschungen 9, 1888, 272, Eilers
& Mayrhofer 1962, Henning 1963, Lane 1967, see summary by Cowgill
1986: 68.
125 Elst (1999: 129 sqq.), simply denies the possibility of IE linguistic
palaeontology and quotes an outspoken, always skeptic S. Zimmer (1990)
as his crown witness. It is precipitous to dismiss carefully applied linguistic
paleontology completely (which according to Zimmer is "approaching its
inevitable end -- with a negative result, of course"); cf. n. 81.
126 Excluded are, of course, the real exports from India such
as rice, cotton, beryl, etc., see Witzel 1999a,b.
127 They have been employed, by Ivanov-Gramkrelidze (1984, I 443),
with a completely different result, as proof that the IE homeland was in
Anatolia/Armenia. However, the irregular correspondences seen in kapi :
Engl. ape; i-bha : ele-phant-; or lIs : leon, etc. are typical for loan
words, not for original, inherited PIE vocabulary. Cf. Elst 1999: 131 sq.,
who even uses words such as pRdAku 'panther' which clearly are loans (Witzel
1999 a,b). The attested use of pRdAku for 'panther' and 'snake' as indicating
closeness to the original designation is not only linguistically impossible
(loanwords!) but also cognitively light-weight: animals similar in appearance
(spots!) are named by the same word. Classical Sanskrit is full of them.
The argument that some animal names in Skt. still are etymologically transparent
can also be made for those of the "druhyu emigrants", the Engl. bear,
Dutch bruin, etc. -- Even matsya 'fish' is derived by Elst from mad
'wet' (EWA II 298 "hardly likely"), in spite of Avestan massia,
Pers. mAhI < IIr *matya; it belongs, according to Mayrhofer EWA II,
1986: 298, not to a word for 'wet', but to *mad(a)s 'food'. All of this
demonstrates Elst's lack of linguistic sophistication. Just as (other parts
of) his books, even such seemingly straightforward sections have to be
checked and re-checked.
128 Elst (1999: 131), taking his cue from Gamkrelidze and Ivanov 1984
(= 1995), takes these shaky etymologies for granted and concludes that
IE came from a tropical area. He adds (199: 131-2) a few very unlikely
comparisons on his own: Latin leo(n) from Skt. rav 'ho howl', mayUra
'peacock' from mA to bleat, gaja 'elephant from garj 'to trumpet';
pRdAku (cf. Witzel 1999) which designates both panther and panther
snake (note, Lubotsky 1999, lecture at the 2nd Ved. workshop at Kyoto)
as referring to primordial formations in IE -- as if animal designations
were not easily transferred!
129 See summary by Cowgill 1986:86 sq.
130 Small, transient and migrating bands and groups such as the
Indo-Aryans or even larger ones such as the Huns are not easily traced;
and, will we ever will find archaeological traces of the well attested
emigration of a small group such as that of the Gypsies? -- Linguistics
(see above, n. 23) and genetics, however, clinch the case: the Bulgarian
Gypsies, for example, have the typical Indian mtDNA (M type) and Y chromosomes
but are only to some 30% Indian; for the rest they have acquired European
genes. This is the exact reversal of the general Indian situation, with
some 25% of W./C. Asian genes (§7). -- Autochthonists will have a
hard time to explain how these Indian emigrants 'selected' their genes
on emigration from India, and 'export' only the 30% proper Indian ones...
In short, the same impossible scenario as in the assumed earlier 'export'
of Indian linguistic features westwards by the IE = "Druhyu" emigrants
(see above, §12.2 ).
131 Elst had not seen this paper by the time he wrote his 1999 book;
he supplies a lot of completely unsubstantiated speculation instead, of
how the Indo-Europeans could have left the subcontinent to settle in Central
Asia and Europe, (see 1999: 126 sq.).
132 Change of meaning ''wheel(s)'' > ''chariot'' (pars pro toto)
is a common occurrence in linguistic experience.
133 There have been efforts, always on the internet, to push
back the dates of chariots and spoked wheels (also implied by Talageri's
2000 years of composition for the RV, see Witzel 2001), to dilute the difference
between chariots and carts/ four wheeled wagons, to find horses all over
India well before the accepted date of c. 1700 BCE; there even has been
the truly asinine proposition to change the meaning of Skt. azva 'horse'
(Equus caballus)and to include under this word the ass/donkey (gardabha,
rAsabha, khara, etc., Equus asinus) and the half-ass (Equus hemionus khur).
Here as elsewhere, it is useless to enter a discussion, as such views are
based, all too often, on lack of expertise in the very subjects such sites
proffer to discuss. On the internet, everyone is his/her own 'expert'.
134 See now however, M.A. Littauer and J.H. Crouwel 1996 for
a Near Eastern origin.
135 Any other scenario would amount to very special pleading, again:
One can hardly maintain that the Vedic 'Panjabis' received these local
loans only after the Iranians had left.
136 The map in Parpola 1994 includes Tibetan, but this development
is late, and typical for the Lhasa dialect. However, Khotanese Saka, just
north of the Pamirs, has retroflexes.
137 This has indeed happened to the Gypsies: in Turkey, N. Africa,
Europe.
138 Interestingly, the c. 1000 year old Indian Parsi pronunciation
and recitation in Zoroastrian ritual(!) of Avestan, while clearly Indianizing,
as in xs'athra > [kSatra], has not yet developed retroflexes.
139 Note that this stage, minus the Indian retroflexion, is still
preserved in Mitanni IA vash-ana- [vAz'h-ana].
140 Other examples for the conditioned OIA development of retroflexes
examples include : k' > c' > z, and g' > j' > j as seen
in: IE *wik'-s > IIr *wic'-s' > Av. vIs'
/ > Ved. viT 'people, settlement'; but > Latin vIc-u-s,
Germanic vik- (as in Viking), etc.; IE *reg'-s > IIr *rAj's' > rAT;
> Lat. rEx, Celtic -rix, Germanic -rik, etc.; cf. also Avest. xs'uuas'
: Ved. SaS; Lat. sex, Germanic sehs, Grk. heks- etc.
141 To justify this, the autochthonous theory must further assume
that the people of the substrate moved into the IA /IE Panjab only after
the Iranians and IE had left. A string of secondary assumptions.
Occam's razor applies.
142 The Gypsies eventually lost the retroflexes (but when?).
143 See Witzel 1999a,b for details: karpAsa cotton, etc.
144 Note that the tiger, N.Pers. bebr, is found in the N. Iranian mountains
from the Elburz to the Kopeh Dagh even today, and the last specimen in
the Aral Lake area is reported to have been shot in the Seventies.
145 The reason for its survival in South Asia (Panjabi bhoj, etc.)
may have been the economical and common ritual use of birch bark, e.g.
for amulets.
146 Perhaps with the exception of the willow (Lat. vitex, etc., see
above, n.118) which it is found, along with the poplar, in the riverine
forests all over the steppe (Schrader 1890: 440, 275). It is attested in
E. Iran where it grows prominently: Avest. vaEti, Pashto vala < *vaitiya;
but it is not found in Vedic/Skt., unless it is retained in veta-sa ''reed,
ratan, Calamus'', with the expected change in meaning "willow > reed".
The poplar and the beech (Lat. fagus etc.) are not attested in Skt.: both
trees are not found in S. Asia during the pre-Indus period, even though
the beech was then found much further east (N. Caucasus, etc.) than the
famous "beech line" (Koenigsberg/Kaliningrad-Odessa). On the other hand,
the oak, though found in various forms in Afghanistan, is not attested
in Skt., perhaps with the exception of the inherited name of the weather
god, Parjanya, who is often linked with the oak in various IE mythologies,
see EWA s.v.; for example, Lithuanian perkU'nas, O.Slavic perunu, Lat.
querquus, etc., see Pokorny, p. 822; for Class. Skt. parkaTI 'ficus inferiora'
see EWA II 192 ~ Ved. plakSa.
147 Friedrich (1970) has pointed out that most IE tree names are nor
explainable by IE etymologies (except for the birch tree < 'shining',
cf. Bryant 1999). Following the autochthonous line, one could therefore
assume that such (supposedly non-IE) names have been borrowed/spread from
India. However, IE tree names such as 'beech, oak', etc. have true IE word
structure: their roots follow the IE pattern (see above §10), and
the suffixes employed are IE as well. In other words, these tree names
*are* IE. That there are isolated roots of tree names is not strange.
After all, many basic words, such as 'eye' and 'hand', (Pokorny 1959: 775,
447) are isolated in IE, i.e. these roots are not employed outside their
narrow realm as (root) nouns other than in clearly derived, secondary ways.
Most other basic IE words are related to verbs and therefore have a much
wider application in word formation. Yet, no one has ever suggested that
a words such as 'eye' is not IE. In addition, many tree names will go back
to pre-IE times when their roots still might have had a clear onomastic
meaning; these pre-IE words subsequently were automatically changed to
fit the IE root structure.
148 Indigenists decry the very concept of substrates, see Elst (1999),
--much as they now begin to decry the various historical levels established
in genetics, based on the analysis of the male only Y chromosome--
as this would necessarily indicate that Vedic had not been present in NW
India since times immemorial.
149 Ved. ibha is of dubious meaning and etymology (Oldenberg 1909-12).
At least 2 of the 4 cases in the RV do not refer to 'elephant' but rather
to the 'retinue train' or the 'court' of a chieftain. The meaning
'elephant' is attested only in Class. Skt. (Manu+), Pali, see EWA I 194;
cf. nevertheless O.Egypt. ',abw, EWA III 28. -- Gamkrelizde and Ivanov
link ibha with Latin ele-phant-, etc. but this requires special, otherwise
unattested phonetic correspondences such as ele - ::
i-, etc.
150 Some of them are of Central Asian origin, see Witzel 1999, Lubotsky
forth.
151 E.g., a comparison between the 1st pl. English (we are), German
(wir sind), Dutch (wij zijn), shows that Engl. are must be a late internal
innovation due to analogy with the 2nd plural form, and the equivalent
of 3rd pl. sind/zijn is also substituted by are; while 1st pl. sind/zijn
itself comes from the 3rd plural: sie sind/zijn.
152 An auxiliary theory, e.g. of a strong local (Dravidian, etc.) influence
on the RV only, as opposed to Iranian --while still in India-- is implausible;
the same applies to Drav. influence after the Iranians supposedly
left: all of this would require an altogether new theory, constructed out
of the blue, of a push towards the northwest by Dravidian.
153 Brentjes' pointing to the peacock motive in Mitanni times art
is a very weak argument (for detailed criticism, see Schmidt 1980: 45 sq.)
We know that even the Sumerians imported many items from India (Possehl
1996). Further, the peacock motif is attested in Mesopotamia well before
the Mitannis. For a list of Mitanni-IA words, cf. now EWA III, Appendix.
154 Mayrhofer 1979: 47; in Palestine, cf. riya-azva: bi-ir-ia-as'-s'u-va.
155 Mayrhofer 1979: 53: in-tar-u'-da, en-dar-u'-ta (Palestine, 15th
cent. BC); cf. Cowgill 1986: 23.
156 Via Mitanni, perhaps also Hitt. agni (aknis', cf. Avest. dAs'tAg'ni),
Mayrhofer 1979: 36, 51: a-ak-ni-is'.
157 The lineage includes bar-sa-ta-tar, saus's'attar (sa-us'-ta-a-tar,
sa-us'-sa-ta (at)-tar), artad(h)Ama (ar-ta-ta-a-ma), sattarna
II, artasmara (ar-ta-as'-s'u-ma-ra), tus'ratta (tu-us'-rat-ta, tu-is'-e-rat-ta,
tu-us'-e-rat-ta: *tvaiSa'ratha), KUR-ti-u'-az-za, Mayrhofer 1979:
54 sqq., cf. Cowgill 1986: 23.
158 Kikkuli bapru-nnu: Ved. babhru, binkara-nnu : Ved. piGgala,
baritta-nnu : Ved. palita, with Rgvedic -r- instead of later -l-, Mayrhofer
1979: 32, 52-3, cf. Cowgill 1986: 23.
159 Elst sees here, of course, a confirmation of his belief that the
RV is of hoary pre-Indus vintage. Thus, he can expect post-Rgvedic prAkRt
forms in 1400 BCE. While some MIA forms may be sought in the RV, their
status is constantly questioned and further reduced. The latest form that
has come under attack is jyotiS < *dyaut-is, see C. aan
de Wiel 2000.
160 "E. Laroche, in his Glossaire de la langue hourrite, lists the
word s'ittanna from the Kikkuli text and comments: "... "sept", d'apre`s
l'indo-arien s'atta-wartanna. - Forme de s'inti/a??" S.v. s'inti2 he says:
"Mais s'inti "sept" doit encore etre se'pare'... de s'itta." He also lists
a word s'ittaa (long a) from two (Hittite?) Kizzuwadna texts." (pers. comm.
by Bjarte Kaldhol, Nov. 5, 2000).
161 Incidentally, it would be eastern MIA, such as mAgadhI (which,
however, does not agree with the extreme Rhotacism of Mitanni-IA but has
l everywhere!), as western North India has retained v- , see
Masica 1991: 99 sq.
162 Thus also Cowgill 1986: 23. Note that Ved. has eva 'only'
< aiva = O.Iran. aiva 'one', and that only MIr. has Evak 'one',
but this is due to the commonplace MIr. suffix -ka; Next to the usual [tri-,
paJca-, *sapta-, nava-vartana]; and racing terms such as : ua-az'an-na
'race track', also with genitive in: -na-s'i-ia!, and perhaps Lu'a-as'-s'u-us'-s'a-n-ni,
'horse trainer', Diakonoff 1971: 81, Mayrhofer 1979: 52;.
163 Mayrhofer 1979: 53; cf. RV maNi, Av. maini, Elam. O.P. *bara-mani,
Latin monIle, etc.; cf. also varuNa as uruna, and Ved. sthUNA, Av. stUnA/stunA,
O.P. stUnA, Saka stunA.
164 Explained as sun god, "s'amas'", Mayrhofer 1979: 32; cf. also the
war god maruttas' = marut-, and king abirattas' = abhiratha;
for details see Balkan 1954: 8.
165 Note, however, timiras' = Ved. timira- 'dark', cf. Balkan
1954: 29, also 1954: 27 laggatakkas' = lakta?
166 Some early IA immigrants that according to Harmatta (1992:
374) seem to be recorded in a tablet of the Dynasty of Agade, at the end
of the third millennium BCE, c. 2300-2100 BCE: a-ri-si(<sa')-en
= arisaina and sa-um-si( <sa')-en = saumasena, are wrong interpretations
of Hurrian words: "Hurrian names in -s'en (not -sen) are common in earlier
periods. aris'en means "The brother gave", and s'aums'en (probably pronounced
tsaom-then) is made from a root sa- plus the verbal suffix -um/-om plus
-s'en, an abbreviated form of s'enni, "brother". These names from Samarra
were published by Thureau-Dangin in RA IX 1-4. See Gelb et al., Nuzi
personal names, Chicago 1963, p. 255" (personal comm. by Bjarte Kaldhol,
Nov. 6, 2000). On s' = [interdental th] see Diakonoff
1971: 46. -- Harmatta (1992: 374) wrongly took these names as a sign
of an early Indo-Aryan spread towards Mesopotamia.
167 Some of the so-called MIA features of Mitanni-Indo-Aryan are due
to the writing system (in-da-ra, etc.); satta is questionable as well:
s'a-at-ta is influenced by the Mitanni term, as *s'a-ap-ta would be possible
in this writing system; S.S. Misra, however, has found linguistic
features common to MIA (Middle Indo-Aryan) and even NIA: assimilation
(sapta > satta); anaptyxis (indra > indara); initial v > b (virya > birya),
read, however, priya! -- K. Norman erroneously pointed to pt > tt (see
discussion of satta), labialization of a > u after v (*as'vasani > as's'us's'anni),
see however, Mayrhofer 1979: 52.
168 The much later emigration of the Gypsies and some others into Central
Asia are of course excluded here.
169 With the (partial) exception of Elst (1999), and Talageri (2000)
for which see above.
170 Megasthenes, the Seleucid ambassador to Candragupta (Sandrokottos)
Maurya's court, at c. 300 BCE (Arrianos, Indika 9.9). -- All of this is
called "entirely plausible" by Elst (1999: 192); however, there even is
6776 BCE as another starting point, according to Pliny, Naturalis Historia
6.59 and Arrianos. Elst strangely comments "even for that early
pre-Vedic period, there is no hint of immigration". In short, according
to Elst (and Talageri 2000) we get Indian "kings" in the Gangetic plains
of the 7th millennium BCE, when this area was populated by a few
hunter and gatherer tribes! These 'monarchs' would indeed be the first
kings on the planet (Witzel 2001). Elst is not aware of the common (Indian,
etc.) tendency to put contemporary lineages one before another when setting
up long range 'historical' records (Witzel 1990). See also next note.
171 See the lists in the Torah, Homers' list of ships, Polynesian
lists of chieftains, and so on. Listenwissenschaft is one of the
oldest 'sciences' in the world, cf. the Babylonian evidence in Z.J.
Smith (1982) and Assmann (1987).
172 Where we can check such Bardic traditions with the help of historical
records, e.g. in the Germanic epic, they tend to telescope, rework the
historical data; for example, they confound Ermanric, the king of the Goths
in the Ukraine at the time of the Huns' invasion, with his grandson Theoderic,
king of the Goths in Italy.
173 The latest example is Talageri (1993, 2000) who builds a whole
imaginative prehistory of S. Asia on such 'data': with an early
emigration of the druhyu branch of the Aryans to Iran and Europe in the
5th millennium BCE, including such fantastic etymologies and identifications
as bhalAnas = Baloch (who appear on the scene only after 1000 CE!), bhRgu
= Phrygians, madra = Mede (mAda), druhyu = Druids, alIna
= Hellenic people, zimyu = Sirmios (Albanians), etc. -- These are Oakish
cases where even Elst (1999: 192 sq.) does not always follow him.
174 The arguments used to justify the historicity of the purANas (Elst
1999) are easily dismissed. While we can expect names of a similar sort
in the older lists --some of them are also found in the Vedas (after all,
names within a family often begin or end in the same way),-- they cannot
be used to substantiate the actual existence of complete purANic lists
during Vedic times. See §19. -- Elst's further argument that
early purANic dynasties are not those of the northwest but of Bihar, Utkala
etc. equally does not hold. It is clear that the beginnings of the lists,
even in the Mbh and RAm., were reformulated to fit local demands: a western
(bharata) one for the Mbh and an eastern (ikSvAku) one for the Kosala area.
(Witzel, in prep.) Agreement between the Epics, purANas, Buddhist
and Jaina texts does not vouch for a 'hoary' age of such lists, just
for a common perception at the time these texts were composed, i.e. after
500 BCE. Only the Vedas are older, and they contain just small fragmentary
sections of the later (enlarged, altered) purANic lists. The influence
of politics of empire (Nanda, Maurya, Gupta) and of local politics (or
the wish by local kings to forge such a link to a well established lineage)
should not be underestimated.
175 Talageri turns things around and finds justification of the purANic
data in the Vedas, and thus a spread of the Lunar dynasty from kosala (prayAga)
westwards. Strangely enough, these pUru dynasties later on again spread
eastwards (as is clear from the Vedas anyhow!) -- All of this is faithfully
repeated by Elst (1999: 191). If this is not a post-factum justification,
a retrofit as indigenist like to call such constructions, of the originally
despised ikSvAku lineage (JB 1.338 = Caland § 115, see a first try
at amelioration in AB 7, Witzel 1989), -- then what? (Discussion
already in Witzel 1995).
176 Especially clear with the introduction of the 'non-Vedic' pANDavas
(Witzel, in prep.).
177 Recently, it has been tested in Papua-New Guinea what the material
remains of some five different linguistic communities belonging to one
particular area would look like. After a deterioration of a few years,
the archaeologists dug them up, and found -- "the same (material)
culture"! So much for the often used or alleged overlap of language and
culture.
178 Similarly early dates are inherent in Talageri (2000). When tabled,
the various family books in his reconstruction turn out to be spread
out over two thousand years, well before the invention of the horse-drawn
chariot. In addition, the very starting point of his book, on which his
'new chronology' of the RV books rests, is clearly wrong: as has been pointed
out (n. 7, 84, 87, 140, 173, 175, 216), his investigation is based on the
present zAkala 'edition' and arrangement of the RV, not on the first collection
("saMhitA", of the kuru period) as established by Oldenberg (1888). How
can one come even close to the period of the RV authors if one accepts
any hymn inserted during the long period of orthoepic diaskeuasis, with
additional, immeasurable influence by unknown teachers that existed between
the first collection and the redaction by the late brAhmaNa scholar zAkalya
(BAU 3). - Talageri's ecstatic summary (2000) therefore is self-defeating:
"Any further research, and any new material discovered on the subject,
can only confirm this description.... but there is no possible way in which
the location of the Original [IE] Homeland in the interior of northern
India, so faithfully recorded in the Puranas and confirmed in the Rigveda,
can ever be disproved." Interestingly, he has taken his initial historiographical
cues from Witzel 1995 (and even lauds the general approach) -- only to
reverse himself completely as to include the usual indigenous ("purANic")
agenda with chariots before their invention, IE emigration from Uttar Pradesh,
etc. (Witzel 2001).
179 Summary by Skjaervo 1995:160, sq., 167 sq.
180 Elst (1999: 180) makes a lot out of this argument ex silentio but
concludes "it is not as strong an argument against "Vedic Harappa" as it
once seemed to be"!
181 See R. Meadow and A. Patel 1997.
182 Bokonyi 1997 finds it in Surkotada IA-B-C, (acc. to Sharma 1990:
382, from the Harappan period: 2300-1700 BCE, Joshi 1990: 17, 59 sqq.)
183 However, note that (according to Meadow/Patel 1997): ''Surkotada
has dates that go into the second millennium, and the date of the ''Harappan''
layers themselves is not at all that clear." Cf. Joshi 1990.
184 The latest folly (again, one created on the internet, this time
by the proponent of an Austric 'theory' of IA origins) is that of the long
extinct early Indian horse, Equus sivalensis. This early horse in fact
emerged c. 2.6 million years ago, overlapping, in the Siwalik Hills, for
a short period with the older (three-toed pre-horse) Hipparion (MacFadden
1992: 139) that died out soon afterwards. Many internet writers now connect
the Sivalensis horse with the 17-ribbed Rgvedic horse and modern S.E. Asian
horses, however, without any evidence cited from archaeology, palaeontology
or genetics. Fact is that horses (Equus caballus) have 18 ribs on each
side but this can individually vary with 17 on just one or on both sides.
Such as is the case (only 5 instead of 6 lumbar vertebrae) with some early
horse finds in Egypt, from the mid-1st millennium BCE, horses that all
were imported from the Near East (and ultimately from the steppe zone).
Clutton-Brock (1992: 83) writes: "It is generally claimed that the
Arab and the Przewalski horse [of Central Asia!] had only five lumbar vertebrae
while all other horse breeds have six. In fact the number is very
variable but it is true that the Arab is more likely to have only five
lumbar vertebrae than other breeds of domestic horse (Stecher 1962)."
Which only underlines that a domesticated, 17-ribbed horse has been brought
into the subcontinent from Central Asia (Bokonyi 1997) -- just the
opposite of what internet 'specialists' (and by simple extension, that
excellent source of scientific information, the New Delhi party journal,
"The Organiser") now claim, -- always without a single scholarly source.
It should also be noted that numeral symbolism may play a role in the RV
passage (1.162.18) mentioning the 17-ribbed horse, which is part of an
additional hymn of a late RV book. The number of gods is given in the RV
as 33 or 33+1, which would correspond to the 34 ribs of the horse (later
on identified with the universe in BAU 1); note further that the horse
is speculatively in brought into connection with all the gods, many of
them mentioned by name (RV 1.162-3).
185 In the Indus Valley, the horse (Equus caballus L.) was first reported,
of course without palaeontological checks, at Mohenjo-Daro by Sewell
(1931). -- Other spurious accounts: Bh. Nath 1962, Sharma 1974,
1993; similarly alleged for late Mohenjo Daro and late Harappa, for Kalibangan
and Rupar (Bhola Nath, see B.B. Lal 1997: 285); for Malvan, Gujarat
(Sharma 1990: 382); for Mohenjo Daro and in small numbers in rather recent
levels, for Harappa from the late phase (Bokonyi 1997). Such strong assertions
of 'archaeological' nature had even convinced R. Thapar (Social Scientist,
Jan.-March 1996, p. 21). -- Elst 1999: 180 sqq. simply relies on these
'archaeological' data (and other writings) without questioning them on
the ground of palaeontology. He even adduces the cave paintings at Bhimbetka
"perhaps 30,000 years old" (Klostermaier, 1989: 35) while such paintings
are extremely difficult to date so far and cannot be relied on, at present,
as a major piece of evidence. In the end, while acknowledging the "paucity"
(correctly: non-occurrence) of horse depictions and remains in the Indus
Civilization, Elst thinks that it is an explainable paucity... "so that
everything remains possible."
186 For consideration are mentioned: from the Neolithic-chalcolithic
levels of Hallur (1600 BC), early Jorwe (1400-1000 BC) and Late Jorwe
(1000-700 BC), from the sites of Inamgaon in Maharashtra (Thomas 1988:
878, 883, Meadow & Patel, 1997). By this time, the domesticated horse
was no longer rare (Thomas 1988: 878).-- Note that Thomas' material does
not have measurements of the bones.
187 For a fraudulous concoction of the picture of a horse on an Indus
seal, see Rajaram and Jha (2000), exposed by Witzel and Farmer (2000).
Elst (1999), as usual, swallowed Rajaram's initial, bold assertion
of Harappan horses, hook and sinker -- in this case even Rajaram's
artist's depiction of the half-horse (that is a bull!), referring
(Elst 1999: 182) to Rajaram's hardly available book From Harappa
to Ayodhya, Hyderabad 1997, see Frontline Nov. 24, 2000: 128 n.1. -- Recently,
the picture of an Indus hemione (with typical short, stiff mane) was put
on the internet as that of a horse, along with two already debunked
horses (Frontline Oct./Nov. 2000) of the new species, to be called after
its discoverer, Equus asinus(?) rajarami!
188 The skeleton has only an carbon reading of c. 3000 BC; it shows
evidence of a hard bridle bit; but the horse is unlikely to have been used
for draught at this early period and was probably used for riding.
This date has recently been withdrawn by D. Anthony (Antiquity 2000: 75),
but has been supplemented by other early evidence for riding at Botai.
-- Note, for a later period, that riding is a lower class occupation even
in the RV, while the nobility drives chariots, see Falk, 1995, Anthony
and Brown 1991; Anthony 1991, Telegin 1995.
189 Zaibert 1993.
190 Anthony and Vinogradov 1995, Parpola 1995, Kuzmina 1994.
191 It is of course an open question whether the inhabitants of Pirak
were IA or, e.g., Drav. speakers; see the discussion of 'horse' words in
Witzel (1999a,b) as well as a discussion of the languages of Sindh and
Baluchistan. -- The Drav. and Mundas have their own words for the
horse, and we can even assume different routes of the introduction of the
horse (e.g. via Tibet and the Himalayan belt).
192 Standard fare with autochthonists/Out of India advocates on the
internet who continue to allege that I make "the Aryans thunder down the
Khyber pass on their chariots" or, worse, their "on their Aryan panzers"
(sic!), while I have not printed any such a folly anywhere. My crime was
to have mentioned 'tanks' in a footnote (1995: 114 n. 74: "the thundering
chariot, the tank of the 2nd millennium B.C."). --- We know that the RV
clearly refers to a rathavAhana that was used to transport the quick but
fragile, lightweight (c. 30 kg) chariot over difficult terrain, just as
we do with modern racing cars. Note also that the wheels of such chariots
would deform if left standing in assembled fashion; the chariots were disassembled
and put together when needed. All of this corresponds with what we know
from accounts of the avoidance by or difficulty of the use of chariots
on uneven terrain from records of the ancient Near East and of Classical
Antiquity. Nevertheless, the Veda also knows of a vipatha '[chariot used
for] pathless [land]', attested in AV. Apparently, the autochthonists have
not considered at all the role of horse-drawn chariots in sport and warfare
of the Ancient Near East. Even a trip to the movies might help!
193 Elst 1999: 178 concludes his somewhat superficial discussion of
the Indo-Europeans and the horse, surprisingly, with an Out of India scenario:
the Aryan 'emigrants' to Central Asia would have learned of the horse (he
does not discuss the chariot, a clear indicator of time and location at
c. 2000 BCE). They would then have transmitted this knowledge, and the
actual animals, back home to India (while the RV supposedly does not know
of Central Asia at all!) Occam's Razor applies. -- Again, I do not maintain,
as some allege, that the Indo-Europeans were the 'sole masters' of horse
riding and chariot driving. They were one of the several peoples from the
Ukraine to Mongolia that made use of the new technology. The exact source
and spread of this phenomenon is still under investigation by archaeologists.
New technologies usually are taken over by neighboring peoples within a
short time span: note the case of the Lakota (Sioux) who took over
--from the Spanish-- the use of the horse and the rifle, a few hundred
years ago, but remained Sioux in language and religion. But, just
like the late-comer in their new hunting culture, the bison (they had been
agriculturalists before the Little Ice Age) the horse, too, made it into
their mythology!
194 The spoked chariot wheels that Sethna wants to find on the Indus
seals turn out to be, in most cases, oblong -- resulting in singularly
bad transport for Indus merchants!
195 The question of post-Indus settlements that exceed the size of
mere villages in Bahawalpur and the Panjab (Shaffer 1999) is in need of
further attention: why is the RV silent about them? If iron is a late as
it is said now (Possehl 1999), is the RV, too, so late as not to know these
settlers any more, except for vague references such as those to the non-pastoral
kIkaTa (RV 3.53)? Similar questions have to be asked about the overlap
between the iorn age PGW and the early YV texts (Witzel 1989).
196 Gupta never translates the RV passages he quotes so that
we can read into them whatever we want: a RV fort (pur) can be a modern
town or a village (pur), etc. Frawley translates, but in the
manner criticized here (n. 38, 204). He believes that his RV translations
prove international trans-oceanic trade, but he never investigates what
samudra or nau actually mean in the Veda (for which see Klaus 1986, 1989,
1989a).
197 See Falk 1981 and place names such as PB 25.10.18 sthUlArmaka
'the large ruin' in kurukSetra; however, hariyupIyA is a river, not Harappa
as has been maintained by some historians for decades (it would have become
something like *harovI, *haroI in modern Panjabi).
198 For the ultimate origin of the word, note also Bur. pl. guriG/gureG
< *g'orum (Berger 1959: 43), gurga'n 'winter wheat', and
the connection with Basque gari 'wheat' < Proto-East Caucasian *gOl*e
'wheat', etc., Witzel 1999b. Harmatta (EWA II 499) thinks of an Anatolian
*ghond[U~], but cf. Klimov's Caucasian (Proto-Kartvelian) *ghomu.
199 Avest. yauua, N.Pers. jav, cf. Osset. jew, yau 'millet'; for
their Indo-European predecessors, note Hom. Greek zea', Lith. jawai 'grain';
the word clearly is derived from *yu 'to graze', see now EWA s.v.
200 Bh. Singh 1995; especially 'detailed' in this respect, Malati Shendge
1977 (e.g., with the "Indus official" Rudra in charge of mountain troops
and house numbers!).
201 Yash Pal 1984, now Radhakrishnan and Merh 1999.
202 Elst (1999:137) makes this into "great catastrophe in about
2000 BC, when the Sarasvati river dried up and many of the Harappan cities
were abandoned... " [While the correct date(s) of the drying up of much
of the "sarasvatI" has not yet been determined!] "This catastrophe
triggered migrations in all directions, to the Malabar coast, to India's
interior, and east, to West Asia by sea (the Kassite dynasty in Babylon
in c. 1600 BCE venerated some of the Vedic gods), and to Central Asia".
I wonder where the evidence for such (e)migrations is to be found. The
only archaeologically attested one is the move, by the Indus people, eastwards
into Haryana/Delhi area, by c. 1400 BCE, see Shaffer and Lichtenstein 1995,
Shaffer 1999, see also §22.
203 Allchin et al. 1995: 37, with a typical development at Bhagawanpura,
Haryana, that might reflect Indus/IA/PGW type populations: many-roomed
houses of brick of the post-urban period, then single-roomed circular huts
of timber and thatch, then many-roomed brick/pressed earth
houses; the last two stages with increasing PGW.
204 The meaning of samudra must be established well; see, however,
Klaus 1986. Note that RV 6.72.3 speaks even of the (three or more!) samudras
of the rivers, samudrANi nadInAm. Note also that the AV 11.5.6 has an uttara
'northern/upper' ocean (Witzel 1984). Finally, compare also Avest. Y. 65
where the Iranian counterpart of the sarasvatI, ar@duuI, flows, somewhat
similar to the sarasvatI and the later Epic gaGgA, from a mountain, hukairiia,
to the "Lake" vourukaS~a, which indicates the Milky Way (Witzel 1984),
(and then further down to earth).
205 Possehl 1993: 85-94.
206 In the new autochthonous version of RV history (Talageri 2000)
this is the oldest book of the RV, -- which would make the sarasvatI,
very much against the wishes of the indigenists, a small river in the early
RV period! As usual, Occam's Razor applies.
207 Differently from the map in Kenoyer (1995: 245) where the
Sutlej, sarasvatI and Ur-Jumna still form one river which indeed flows
from the Himalayas to the ocean (called Nara in Sindh).
208 While in the still later hymn, RV 10.75, the vipAz (Beas)
is altogether missing and might have been substituted by the zutudrI (Satlej),
i.e. the joint vipAz-zutudrI (unless the Beas, unlikely, is called marudvRdhA
here).
209 For a full list of settlements see now Possehl (1999) and note
the theory of a handful of separate Indus 'domains'.
210 Thus Jamison and Witzel, (written in 1992 but still in press; however,
see soon: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/vedichinduism.htm),
and similarly now R. S. Sharma 1995.
211 Shaffer and Kenoyer argue for a continual, 'organic' archaeological
evolution reflecting indigenous cultural development from pre- to proto-historic
periods without intrusions in the archaeological record from the northwest
(or anywhere else). However, recent excavations seem to indicate, for example,
a strong BMAC influence in late-Harappan (including several statues
such as the so-called Priest-King), before its decay at 1900 BCE.
212 For a survey see Possehl 1996; for the discussion of a recent,
particularly blunt and fraudulous attempt (Rajaram and Jha 2000) see Witzel
and Farmer in the Indian news journal, Frontline, Oct. 13, 2000 and
discussion in subsequent issues.
213 I leave aside the question of decipherment. There is a new attempt
about once per month now, increasingly claiming that the texts are in early
Sanskrit. Non-Sanskritic ones include, e.g., R. Mathivanan 1995,
Arun Pathak and N.K. Verma 1993; both find continued use of the (unchanged!)
Indus script, after a lapse of evidence spanning some 4000 years, but exemplified
by photos, on the house walls of the Austro-Asiatic Santals in S. Bihar.
214 Coningham 1995 maintains an early --improbable--date for Brahmi
at c. 500 BCE for Sri Lanka. This single, early date probably is due to
unclear stratigraphy; the singular find of inscribed materials is
situated barely below a much later level.
215 Cf. also the discussion by Elst 1999: 96 sqq.
216 Which greatly irks Talageri (2000) who simply relies on the superficial
outward appearance of the present (zAkala) RV; he is simply ignorant of
the history of Rgvedic philology of the past 150 years and relies
just on Griffith's outdated and similar uncritical English translation
of the late 19th century and on some Skt. word indexes of the RV (for details,
Witzel 2001).
217 Note that similar claims have been made for the Bible and other
ancient texts. As it has been said: select some significant numbers relating,
e.g. to the (19th c.) Washington monument, add some astronomical facts
and --lo, behold-- unforeseen relations of the monument with the earth,
space and time emerge!
218 See the long list of late 19th and early 20th cent. discussions
in L. Renou, Bibliographie ve'dique, Paris 1931, 158-163: Weber 1860, Thibaut,
IA 1885, p. 85 sqq., Oldenberg, ZDMG 48, 629 sqq, Jacobi 1893, 1894, ZDMG
49, 218 sqq., Oldenberg, ZDMG 49, 470 sqq., Jacobi, ZDMG 50, 69-83, Tilak
1893, 1903, Whitney 1894, JAOS 6, 413 sqq.; JAOS 8, 85 sqq,
etc. Cf. Elst 1999: 96 sqq.
219 Pingree does not find basic astronomical skills among the early
Indo-Aryan because the texts do not specifically outline such skills.
220 Autochthonists now date the Buddha to 1700 BCE or even 3139/8 BCE,
and Candragupta Maurya (of c. 300 BCE) is replaced by Candragupta, the
Gupta king; these and similarly absurd dates are found in Elst 1999: 97.
221 Note that ZB has the alternative dates rohiNI, mRgazIrSa, phalgunI,
hasta, citrA, and BZS also has "at the appearance" of zravaNa, citrA/svatI,
all indicating various ritual concerns, see Witzel 1999c.
222 The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to the Vedic references of
a magha solstice, see Elst 1999: 100, which, in his view, would allow
to place the [iron age] brAhmaNa and sUtra literature at 2300 BCE [long
before the introduction of iron]. Other alleged astronomical evidence such
as the svarbhAnu myth in RV 5.40.5-9 (a late appendix to RV, see Oldenberg
1888!), has been discussed already in the 19th century. Such references
are much too vague to be used for dating (nevertheless see Elst 1999: 107).
The same applies to the appendix hymn RV 8.93 which Elst (1999: 111 sqq.)
wants to turn into a reference to the heliacal rising of the sun in vRSabha.
The bull here is, as so often, just indra. Further, RV 3.39.3 (Elst 1999:
113) refers to the mArtANDa/vivasvant myth, not to astronomy; RV 5.83.3
is a poetical image comparing thunder to lion's roar, and not the siMha
zodiacal sign. Apart from the fact that Elst has to demonstrate the use
of the zodiac for the RV, this is poetry, not astronomy. "It could
not be clearer" (as Elst says -- but about the zodiac!) Again, RV 6.49.7
describes young women who are 'bright' (citra) not the asterism Spica in
Virgo (cf. now also Hock, forthc.) Just as in the gItA, the one who
looks for Krishna everywhere will find him, in casu early astronomy in
the RV; the same applies to S. Kak (1994). Elst's bold summary (1999: 117)
is based on such shaky data: "the Rg-Veda was composed in the 4th millennium
as... the Brahmanas and Sutras are products of the High Harappan period
towards the end of the 3rd millennium BC." That this "has been a growing
challenge to the AIT defenders for two centuries" is easily lead ad absurdum.
-- The same fundamental mistake is committed by Klostermaier (1998): "Texts
like the Rigveda, the Shatapathabrahmana and others contain references
to eclipses as well as to sidereal markers of the beginning of seasons,
which allow us by backward calculation, to determine the time of their
composition." For all such monolateral assertions, see discussion below,
§32 .
223 Seidenberg insisted that the geometry of the zulba sUtras
must have been the origin of the Babylonian system and, accordingly, he
would date it no later than 1700 BCE. He neglects other possibilities such
as a common origin or a common origin in another area (see Staal
1999).
224 Incidentally, autochthonists always insist on the lack of archaeological,
palaeontological etc. evidence or the IA "invasion" (or immigration/trickling
in) theory. However, it may be pointed out that none the Out of India
theories are substantiated by archaeology etc. either. The matter has not
been raised yet, but it must be pointed out that just as there is clear
linguistic, textual and now genetic evidence but "no Aryan archaeology,
no Aryan bones", there also is no archaeological proof, but only historical,
clear linguistic and now also genetic evidence for the one clear emigration
of an Indian population westwards in historical times -- that of the Gypsies
(Roma, Sinti etc.; there are one or two similar cases, attested in later
times, but on a much more limited scale, see Hock 1999).
225 Except, of course, if the aim is some 'superior', religious
or political motive.
226 Such as Kak's ''astronomical code'' that is based on
a combination of Rgvedic brick pilings of the still non-existent Agnicayana
and the structure of the still non-existent complete RV collection. Note,
that it is not questioned but favored by Klostermaier (1998), Elst (1999)
and other revisionists/indigenists.
227 Even that of Mitanni-IA, see above; excluding, of course,
that of the comparatively late IA emigrants, the Gypsies.
228 The most blatant rewriting of 19th century (European) intellectual
history (and much else!) has been carried out by the mathematician
(Ph.D. 1976) and electrical engineer (B.A. 1965) N.S. Rajaram (1993, 1995,
etc.) who sees missionary and colonialist designs all over Indology. Unfortunately,
he had to rely on English summaries (of summaries) of 19th cent. sources
written in various European languages -- hardly a good starting point
to write history. Even a cursory reading of his many, repetitive books
will indicate just one thing: a lot of fantasy. These books are nothing
but a new mythology of the 19th century, written for and now increasingly
accepted by (expatriate) Indians of the 21st century to shore up their
claims to a largely imagined, glorious but lost distant past.
229 It is usually not mentioned that W. Jones' formulation does
include not only the languages belonging to the IE family, such as Sanskrit,
Greek, and Latin but also unrelated ones such Malay.
230 For example, the first translation and dictionary (1873) of the
RV by the well-known German mathematician Grassmann analyses anAs-, (which
occurs only once in the RV, at 5.29.10!), as 'ohne Mund, Antlitz'
(without mouth, face, an-As); however, the word was taken by later 19th
century writers as an indication of a racial characteristic, 'noseless'
(a-nAs), while the passage in question clearly indicates the 'speechlessness'
and unusual speech of the dasyu.
231 I have pointed to this (1995), when I discussed the various forms
of argumentation that have to be avoided in writing ancient Indian history;
however, this point has largely been misunderstood or blatantly disregarded
by adherents of autochthonous or Out of India theories: in many web sites
(and in Talageri 2000), these writers excoriate me for my critique of present
revisionist/autochthonous writings, but they do not even mention my criticism
of past western or of certain present archaeological and historical writings
(often produced by "westerners").
232 Witzel 1995, 1999d.
233 See caraka 3.83, nyAyasUtra 4.2.50, the method
is used in mahAbhASya, and still earlier in some brahmodyas (Witzel
1987a, and forthc.)
234 Such as N.S. Rajaram's (2000) case of fraud and fantasy in 'deciphering'
the Indus seals, see Witzel & Farmer 2000.
235 If this is not believed, after the evidence presented throughout
this paper, I may add a very recent experience: a visit from a "type 3"
(see above, n. 73) graduate in mechanical engineering who firmly held that
the Vedas are 2 billion years old, are Izvara's revelation, can only be
understood after initiation (upanayana), are the sources all languages
in the world and of all sciences, etc., -- all of this internalized and
integrated, without any problem, with his studies in the hard sciences.
236 A sign of hope is that recent interviews with Indian College students
from all over the country seem to indicate that they have no interest at
all in this kind of debate. They are more more practically minded.
("The New Republic", Times of India, Jan. 26., 2001)

ABBREVIATIONS

The abbreviations for texts are the commonly used ones; important
ones include those listed below. Note: for ready reference, the five historical
levels of Vedic are indicated by numbers (1-5), followed by their
geographical location, W: western North India = Panjab, Haryana,
C: central North India = Uttar Pradesh, E: eastern North India = N. Bihar;
S: southern N. India = between the Jamna/Ganges and the Vindhya mountains).

Agrawal, D.P. & J.S. Kharakwal. Outstanding problems
of early iron age in India: need of a new approach (in press)

Allchin, Bridget and Raymond. The Rise of Civilization in India and
Pakistan. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press 1982

Allchin, F. R. The Archaeology of Early Historic South Asia. The Emergence
of Cities and States. With Contributions from George Erdosy, R. A. E. Coningham,
D. K. Chakrabarti and Bridget Allchin. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press 1995

Asimov, M.S. et al. (eds.) Ethnic Problems of the early History
of Central Asia: international symposium [ = International Symposium on
Ethnic Problems of the Ancient History of Central Asia (Second Millennium
BC) Dushanbe 1977

Cavalli-Sforza, L.L., P. Menozzi, A. Piazza. The history and geography
of human genes. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1994.
--- and F. Cavalli-Sforza, The Great Human Diasporas. The History of
Diversity and Evolution. Reading MA : Helix Books 1995

Chakrabarti, Dilip K. Early iron in India. Journal of the Economic
and Social History of the Orient 20, 1977, 166-84
Iron in early Indian literature, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
1979, 22-30
----, The Early Use of Iron in India. Delhi: Oxford Univ. Press 1992

Choudhury, Paramesh. The Aryans: A modern Myth. Part -I. (A Story of
a Treacherous Theory that Concerns Every Indian) A Book that Offers Many
Things to Think Anew. New Delhi: Eastern Publishers' Distributor 1993

Hock, Hans H., Principles of Historical Linguistics, Berlin/NY
: Mouton de Gruyter 1986
---, Pre-Rgvedic Convergence Between Indo-Aryan (Sanskrit) and Dravidian?
A Survey of the Issues and Controversies. In: J.E.M. Houben (ed.)
Ideology and Status of Sanskrit: Contributions to the History of the Sanskrit
Language. Leiden: Brill 1996, 17-58
--, Out of India? The linguistic evidence. In: J. Bronkhorst
& M. Deshpande, Aryan and Non-Aryan in South Asia. Evidence, Interpretation
and Ideology. Harvard Oriental Series. Opera Minora, vol. 3. Cambridge
1999, 1-18
---, Philology and the historical interpretation of the Vedic texts.
Lecture at the July 2000 meeting of the World Association for Vedic Studies
in Hoboken, NJ. (forthc., to be published in the Proceedings)

Kennedy, Kenneth A.R. Have Aryans been identified in the prehistoric
skeletal record from South Asia? Biological anthropology and concepts of
ancient races. G. Erdosy (ed.) The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia. Berlin/New
York : de Gruyter 1995, p. 32-66
---, God-apes and fossil men : paleoanthropology of South Asia.
Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2000

Mueller, F. Max. India: what can it teach us? New York: J. W. Lovell
Company 1883
---, Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryans. London: Longmans
Green 1888.
---, I point to India. Selected writings of Max Mueller, edited by
Nanda Mookerjee. Bombay: Shakuntala Pub. House 1970

Oldham, C. E. The Sarasvati and the Lost River of the Indian Desert.
1886, repr. in: Radhakrishna and Mehr 1999, 89-93.
---, On probable changes in the geography of the Panjab and its rivers.
JASB 55, 332sqq

Pargiter, F. E. The PurANa text of the Dynasties of the Kali Age. London
: Oxford University Press 1913

Parpola, Asko. The coming of the Aryans to Iran and India and the cultural
and ethnic identity of the DAsas, Studia Orientalia (Helsinki) 64, 1988,
195-302
---, The problem of the Aryans and the soma: Textual-linguistic
and archaeological evidence. In; Erdosy, G. (ed.). The Indo-Aryans of Ancient
South Asia. Berlin/New York : de Gruyter 1995, 353-381

Salomon, Richard. On the Origin of the Early Indian Scripts: A review
article. Journal of the American Oriental Society 115, 1995, 271-279.

Sastry, T.S.K. Vedanga jyotisa of Lagadha in its Rk and Yajus
recensions : with the translation and notes of Prof. T.S. Kuppanna Sastry,
critically edited by K.V. Sarma. New Delhi : Published for
the National Commission for the Compilation of History of Sciences in India
by Indian National Science Academy, 1985.

Schrader, O. Prehistoric antiquities of the Aryan peoples: a manual
of comparative philology and the earliest culture. Being "Sprachvergleichung
und Urgeschichte" of Dr. O. Schrader. Transl. by Frank Byron
Jevons ... from the 2d rev. & enl. German ed. with the
sanction and co-operation of the author. London, C. Griffin and Company
1890.

Telegin, D. About the absolute age of the settlement and cemetery of
Dereivka on the Middle Dnieper. Papers presented at the conference Early
Horsekeepers of the Eurasian Steppes, 4500-1500 B.C., June 19-24, 1995,
Petropavlovsk, Kazakhstan.

Tilak, B.G. The Orion; or, Researches into the antiquity of the Vedas.
Poona: Tilak Bros. 1893
---, The Arctic home in the Vedas : being also a new key to the interpretation
of many Vedic texts and legends. Poona: Kesari / Bombay: Ramchandra Govind
& Son, 1903

A BZS passage discussed in EJVS 7-3, notes 45-46, has evoked protracted
discussion. A few weeks ago I came across a recent discussion by Toshifumi
Goto, Sendai University, Japan, which follows.

Toshifumi Goto (2000) has translated and commented on BZS 18.44: 397.9
sqq., without mentioning my 1995 paper, while I, in turn, had overlooked
H. Krick's translation in her large agnyAdheya study (1982). As will
be seen, both agree almost verbatim with the various possibilities
I have sketched in EJVS 7-3 (notes 45-46). The only difference is
that Krick takes amAvasu from amA 'at home' + vasu 'goods,
wealth'. But note her last sentence (n. 90).

"Ayu wandered forth westwards [from there]. To him belong these
(humans, who are called:) "kurus and paJcAlas, kAzis and videhas." {N87}
They are the leading-away {N88} stemming from Ayu. Turning westwards amAvasu
(wandered forth). To him belong these: "gAndhAris, pArzus, {N 89} arATTas".
They are the (leading-away) stemming from amAvasu. {N 90}

N87 iti can hardly be the particle that concludes enumarations (cases
in OERTEL, Syntax of cases, 1926, 11). In both compounds the type ajAva'H
[the category of] goats and sheep' may be the one in question: a
plural dvandva of classification, cf. GOTO Compositiones Indogermanicae,
Commemoration vol. Schindler (1999) 134 n. 26.

N88 Apparently the inheritance of his colonization ("leading-away")
is intended; with well-known attraction of the pronoun of the subject,
in gender and number, to the predicate noun ["verbal phrase"].

N89 Understood, with WITZEL, Fs. Eggermont (1987) 202 n. 99, Persica
8 (1980) 120 n.126 as gAndhArayas parzavo instad of -ya sparzavo, for which,
however, a spelling gAndhArayaH parzavo would be exspected in the late
BaudhZrsU. The mistake therefore points to a period in which -SSP- was
still pronounced as -SP- (as e.g., in MS, cf. [Wackernagel's] A[lt]i[ndische]
Gr[ammatik] I 342), and when H (for the first s) had not yet been
introduced. -yaspa- escaped an (interpretative) change to - yaH pa- oder
-yaH spa-.

N90 Apparently the idea of Ayu'- as normal adjective 'alive, agile'
underlies this, and correspondingly, as KRICK 214 interprets, of amAvasu-:
"Westwards [trekked] A. (or: he stayed home in the west, as his name
says 'one who has goods/possessions at home')".